BAM Hackathon BUAP 2025

Infodata

Name of the project: Open BAM BUAP: 1st GLAMhack in Puebla, México
Amount requested: 5000 CHF$
Type of grantee: Group
Name of the contact: Sandra Palacios
Contact: sandra.palaciosg@correo.buap.mx

Final Report

By SandyEleJaguar & Beat Estermann , August 2025

1. Introduction

From 12 to 15 June 2025, the first edition of the Bibliotecas Archivos y Museos Hackathon of Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla (short: “Hackatón BAM BUAP”) took place at the Centro Cultural Universitario BUAP in Puebla, Mexico. The event was organized by Facultad de Artes Plásticas y Audiovisuales BUAP in collaboration with Dirección General de Bibliotecas (DGB) BUAP.

The Hackatón BAM BUAP officially began on June 12 with an opening session introducing participants to the hackathon format, which focused on leveraging open data from cultural heritage institutions. As the first event of its kind in the region, insights and outcomes from our 2024 collaboration with GLAMhack Switzerland were shared to provide context on how the idea for a similar hackathon at BUAP emerged and explain the collaborative dynamics of such events, emphasizing interdisciplinary work and the use of open cultural data.

A key moment was the presentation of interdisciplinary projects developed by students from the Faculty of Visual and Audiovisual Arts (ARPA), resulting from Swiss-Mexican collaboration making use of open data in some form. These works, created under the CultureFLOW methodology—designed to integrate artistic processes into GLAM hackathons—served as tangible examples of how to address cultural heritage challenges with both creative and academic rigor. Their showcase allowed the hackathon participants to grasp the scope and unique aspects of projects born in this context, inspiring fresh perspectives on cross-border innovation and artist-researcher collaboration.

Over the following two days, participants worked on tackling the challenges presented during the pitching session. These challenges were designed around both the newly released datasets provided specifically for the event and existing open datasets from Swiss museums, previously made available during past editions of GLAMhack Switzerland. This approach reinforced one of the project’s core objectives: to promote the adoption of open, reusable data among GLAM institutions by demonstrating the potential for cross-border and historical dataset reuse—leveraging platforms like Wikimedia and other open-access repositories.

This report offers a recap of the outcomes of the event and includes learnings that will be taken up in future hackathons. It is based on an internal project evaluation as well as a feedback survey that was shared with participants of the event. To complete the picture, a summary of the settlement of accounts for the event is presented.

2. Main Objectives of the BAM Hackathon BUAP 2025

The project established the following objectives:

To organize a GLAMhack event at Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla (BUAP) in Puebla, Mexico (“Organization of a first GLAM hackathon in Puebla”);
To encourage more GLAM institutions in Mexico and Switzerland and Mexico to release their data and content in free, reusable formats, if possible through Wikimedia projects, facilitating online collaboration (“Promotion of Open GLAM principles among heritage institutions”);
To develop artistic projects with BUAP's School of Arts students based on Mesoamerican collections from Swiss museums for presentation at GLAMhack 2025 (“Artistic engagement with Mesoamerican collections”);
To involve students from BUAP's continuing education program in information management in Wikimedia platform activities (“Sensitization of BUAP students for Wikimedia projects”); and
To share project results and experiences in implementing the CultureFLOW methodology with Wikimedia CH (“Know-how exchange with Wikimedia CH”).

3. Accomplishments

Individual hackathon projects have been documented on the hackathon platform. Below, we will briefly assess the extent to which our objectives have been achieved within the context of the hackathon and the pre- and side-events.

3.1 A First GLAM Hackathon in Puebla

Given past experiences in Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Finland, and other countries, hackathons are a great means to sensitize target groups (data providers, data users, and intermediaries) for the cause of Open GLAM and to facilitate community building, know-how exchange, and networking across professional boundaries.

From June 12-14, 2025, a first GLAM hackathon was successfully held at the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla (BUAP) in Puebla, Mexico, with a total attendance of 93 participants (38 female and 55 male) including 75 university students, 6 faculty members, 4 librarians, and 8 archivists. Participants worked on 10 projects from the 13 challenges presented during the event.

These outcomes resulted from extensive coordination with various departments at BUAP, facilitated by Dr. Víctor Ruíz, Director of ARPA, and the Vicerrectoría de Docencia (the office responsible for authorizing faculty-led university initiatives) and with the support from the Vicerrectoría de Extensión y Difusión de la Cultura, as well as the Directors of the University Archives and Central Library, both of whom agreed to collaborate in the context of the hackathon: The Archives contributed a specialized database, while the Library provided the venue for the event.

Additionally, Sandra Palacios incorporated Wikimedia editing workshops into two of her Spring 2025 courses, preparing students to participate in the Hackathon. With approval from ARPA’s Director, she also taught an Interdisciplinary Projects course during the Summer inter-semester, enabling enrolled students to engage directly in Hackathon activities.

The most significant hurdle was the university-wide student strike taking place between February and May 2025. Having secured the institutional agreements, the final approvals for dates, logistics, and promotion were still pending when the strike began in February. Students occupied campus facilities, demanding systemic improvements, which halted administrative operations and suspended all extracurricular activities. The strike lasted until early May, drastically compressing our preparation timeline.

Despite time constraints, our team’s intensified efforts ensured operational success:

Logistics: Approved dates and venues were secured last minute.
Attendance: Exceeding expectations, 93 participants joined (versus 80 projected), reflecting strong community engagement.
Results: The challenges submitted, and the project outcomes were highly satisfactory, underscoring the event’s resonance within our academic and creative circles. Notably, two challenges centered their projects on leveraging Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata.

The participating BUAP institutions were:

Faculty of Visual and Audiovisual Arts
Faculty of Computer Science
University for Adult Education
General Directorate of Libraries
Directorate of the University Historical Archives
Art Gallery of the University Cultural Center

3.2 Promotion of Open GLAM Principles Among Institutions

Securing the release of institutional databases became our primary operational hurdle during this inaugural hackathon. While preparatory work with university GLAM partners had commenced in January, the extended student strike (February-May) critically disrupted our timeline, forcing last-minute adaptations to deliver the promised resources. Despite these obstacles, we successfully secured the timely release of three key datasets:

The database of murals created by Visual Arts students, published on Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata.
The photographic collection of Student Movements from the University Historical Archives (300 images).
The audiovisual archive database from the Faculty of Visual and Audiovisual Arts (67 registered works).

The Director of the School of Visual Arts facilitated the loan of photographic equipment and coordinated the necessary human resources to expedite the digitization of the photographic archive provided by the Historical Archives for the Hackathon. Concurrently, Visual Arts students conducted photographic documentation and created technical records with the required metadata for ARPA's mural collection. Additionally, the Coordinator of ARPA's Audiovisual Archive received brief training to prepare the archive's metadata.

A serendipitous encounter between Beat Esterman and the director of the CCU Art Gallery led to an impromptu partnership. Though there was insufficient time to prepare a dedicated database, the director attended the event, cementing future collaboration. The gallery will donate its first collection to Wikimedia Commons in Autumn.

3.3 Artistic Engagement with Mesoamerican Collections

In order to promote the development of artistic projects based on Mesoamerican collections from Swiss museums among students of the BUAP's School of Arts, we continued to rely on the CultureFLOW Methodology, first developed and tested in the context of the Swiss GLAMhack 2024. Developed as a preparatory framework for GLAMhack 2024, CultureFLOW engaged BUAP Arts students with Mesoamerican collections through an artistic research process. This methodology enabled participants to:

reinterpret cultural heritage through contemporary creative practices;
develop accessible artistic projects for audiences without physical access to collections;
prioritize meaningful engagement with descendant communities.

Three projects emerged from this GLAMhack 2024 initiative, all showcased during the inauguration of the Hackatón BAM BUAP 2025:

"La Mithotia de las máscaras" (Cooperation with the Burgdorf Castle Museum). At the suggestion of the museum, a team of students at ARPA produced a short video and an animation film involving several Mexican masks from the Burgdorf Castle museum exhibition giving their perspective on them. The video and the animation film have been included in interactive video stations in the museum, which comprise further contributions from people from various cultures living in Burgdorf. The content of the video station is also available on the museum’s website. The cooperation has been complemented by an exhibition in the museum’s foyer about Mexican “bordado” culture and Mexican mask culture, featuring the “bordados” and sculptures used for the product.
La Mithotia de las máscaras - Interactive Screen Burgdorf Castle Museum.

"Maximilian of Habsburg": Originating from the territory of today’s Switzerland, the dynasty of the Habsburg has been present in many different countries, and its members have been associated with a variety of historical events that have left their traces in our collective memories. Responding to the challenge to tell a story about the Habsburg from the point of view of Mexican history, a student group has produced a short animation film in 2D about Emperor Maximilan’s last day (execution), which will be screened at Mexico’s Fuerte de Loreto Museum in September 2025.

“Mujer Lipan” is a stop-motion short film project centering around a statue of a Lipan woman in the collection of the ethnographic museum in Geneva. Its aim is to dive into the collective memory of the Lipan people (the south-easternmost Apache tribe living across the border between Texas and Mexico). For this purpose, the project team is planning to travel to the border region in order to meet representatives of the tribe. The project is currently still in the fundraising phase.

At the BAM BUAP Hackathon 2025, the challenge entitled “Pluralist views on Mesoamerican Collections” was again presented to the student community, leading to two additional projects.

One project, titled “Kalakas Chidas”, proposes an interdisciplinary collaboration between Visual Arts and Film students. The concept combines installation art with "one-minute films" using archival materials from the Ethnographic Museum of Neuchâtel and photographic records from the Historical Archives to commemorate a 1973 Puebla tragedy: the killing of three students and a professor. Currently, the team has completed preliminary sketches and historical research, and will receive institutional support from ARPA’s Director to finalize the project for presentation at the next Hackatón BAM BUAP 2026.

The second project, “Pre-Columbian Masks”, was developed during the hackathon using digitized images from the Rietberg Museum’s Pre-Columbian mask collection. It involved two phases:

A cyanotype workshop was carried out during the hackathon, introducing participants to this alternative photographic technique;
A large-scale textile mask collage was created, incorporating cyanotype prints and embroidery, designed to introduce the university community to the collection through mixed-media art.

Starting point and source of inspiration for the artistic processes leading to these projects is most often a museum catalog. For this purpose, we are working towards improving the access to Mesoamerican collections: Institutions holding artifacts from Mesoamerica are being approached in order to ask them to make their collections accessible online: their catalogs, photographs of the artifacts, etc. in line with the OpenGLAM Principles. They are asked to make their catalogs available in a machine-readable format, and – to the extent possible – to make the photographs available for reuse by uploading them to Wikimedia Commons. A first showcase has been provided by Museum Rietberg in Zurich, which has uploaded some highlights from their collections and are ready to upload further high-quality images of their collection items on demand.

This iterative process between hackathons (GLAMhack 2024 → Hackatón BAM BUAP 2025) highlights how the methodology can evolve to address new challenges while maintaining its core focus on creative, critical engagement with cultural heritage.

Unfortunately, we were informed that GLAMhack 2025 had been postponed to 2026 in Switzerland, making it impossible to present the results of these projects this year. However, we remain enthusiastic and are awaiting the next opportunity to share our results with the Swiss GLAM community.

3.4 Sensitization of BUAP Students for Wikimedia Projects

To achieve this goal, an agreement was established with ARPA's Director to conduct pre-hackathon activities introducing students to Wikimedia projects. This collaboration enabled two workshops held by Sandra Palacios:

A Wikidata workshop for 20 students enrolled in the "Cultural Heritage" course (January 30, 2025).
An introductory Wikimedia workshop for 26 Digital Art students (February 2, 2025).

Additionally, students from the "Interdisciplinary Projects" course (led by Sandra Palacios) participated directly in the hackathon, developing two challenge-based projects:

The textile collage "Pre-Columbian Masks" (mentioned previously).
"Cultural Radar" - a collaborative project with programming students to create a digital cultural calendar for Puebla's metropolitan municipalities.

The original plan of working more closely with the Universidad para Adultos (UPA) in order to involve students from BUAP's continuing education program in information management in Wikimedia platform activities, has been put on hold due to the unavailability of our original interlocutor at UPA (due to health reasons) and the great strain the student strike put on the organization during the Spring semester.

3.5 Know-how Exchange with Wikimedia CH

In July 2025, a meeting with Wikimedia CH’s GLAM coordinator took place in Bern, which allowed us to update each other on the progress of our respective projects. We furthermore shared our experiences with the GLAM-Wiki community at large by means of a newsletter article.

As mentioned above, due to circumstances beyond our control, we will not be able to share the collaborative project results from the CultureFLOW methodology at the Swiss GLAMhack in 2025, as the event has been postponed until next year. Nevertheless, our collaboration with Wikimedia CH and the Swiss Open GLAM community remains active, and we are exploring alternative ways to exchange our know-how and experiences.

4. Particularities of the Hackathón BAM BUAP 2025

In the light of the experiences of the Swiss GLAMhack, the following particularities of the Hackathón BAM BUAP can be highlighted:

The hackathon was implemented thanks to the strong and broad involvement by a large state university, under the leadership of one of its art schools and with the participation of several of its heritage institutions. The fact that BUAP is such a large and diverse institution enables synergies between students, professors, researchers, and administrative staff from the university's various departments; as already mentioned, our hackathon involved the participation of six entities, including academic and administrative units as well as cultural heritage institutions.

Social Service is a mandatory activity that BUAP students must complete in order to obtain their bachelor's degree. This framework was an invaluable source of human resources for our event, as we lacked the financial resources to hire the necessary staff for the Hackathon. We issued a call for students to fulfill this academic requirement by working with us. We had the full-time participation of 2 Social Service students enrolled in the "BAMhack BUAP" program, in addition to 7 people who were doing their internships with the Director of ARPA and who were redirected to provide support during the event.
Social service students working at the Hackathon BAM BUAP 2025

So far, BUAP remains the only institution where the CultureFLOW methodology has been implemented with success. Related initiatives in Switzerland and Austria have failed due to a lack of funding and due to a lack of engagement by art schools. From a resource perspective, two aspects are crucial:
- Implementing the CultureFLOW methodology requires an active engagement of organizers/facilitators with interested artists over a prolonged period of time; during the pilot phase in 2024-2025, Sandra Palacios and Beat Estermann, as well as some of the participating students, invested a lot of volunteer time in order to make this work. In the longer run, the method can be implemented in a sustainable manner only if these interactions between organizers and students are taking place in the context of regular university courses. In the context of the Hackathón BAM BUAP 2025, we have now succeeded in making this crucial step towards the institutionalization of the method.
- Implementing the actual projects emanating from the CultureFLOW methodology again requires a great deal of investment, especially on behalf of the students, but partly also on behalf of organizers/facilitators. Furthermore, depending on the project, project-specific fundraising is required to cover financial expenses. Among the three projects of the pilot phase, the two “low-cost” projects could be implemented thanks to the volunteer effort by the artists, the inclusion of some of the activities in the university’s Social Service program (see above), and the financial participation of the Swiss partner museum in one of the cases. Here again, in the longer run, the efforts provided by the organizers/facilitators should be covered in the context of regular university courses. The expenses for occasional travels between Switzerland (Europe) and Mexico should be covered by the participating institutions and organizations (as was for example the case in the context of the GLAMhack 2024), if the international cooperation aspect is to be fostered in the future as well.

Unlike the Swiss GLAMhack, which has only seen sporadic participation by artists, the BAMhack BUAP 2025 has seen strong participation by art students, resulting in a variety of artistic projects during the hackathon. Furthermore, in several instances, a fruitful exchange could be observed between art students and participants from other backgrounds (e.g. staff from heritage institutions, or software engineering students). While the recipe for success might not be easy to replicate elsewhere given the specificities of the setting we encountered at BUAP, we will build on this year’s experiences to further develop the Hackathon BAM BUAP with a strong involvement by artists alongside other professional communities.

Like the Swiss GLAMhack, the Hackathon BAM BUAP has been positioned as a non-competitive hackathon, encouraging collaboration and the exchange of know-how between the participating teams. While this will require some further sensitization especially among students of software engineering, we are convinced that this is the right positioning of the event if we want to continue prioritizing the promotion of the know-how exchange, networking, collaboration, and cross-fertilization between various professional communities.

5. Potential for Further Development

Several areas for improvement have been identified based on the internal project evaluation and the feedback from the post-event survey and further meetings with ARPA representatives. The key points that will be crucial for the organization of future hackathon events are:

Expand Institutional Partnerships
- Establish agreements with additional GLAM institutions to access more datasets.
- Secure earlier data releases to allow for adequate preparation time.
- Engage more staff via the Social Service program in order to support GLAM institutions in their data publication activities over longer periods of time.
- Further promote the OpenGLAM Principles among heritage institutions in the Puebla region (beyond BUAP).
- Actively involve staff from GLAM institutions in the organization of the hackathon, with a focus on outreach to further institutions (word of mouth among peers).
- Examine the possibility of turning BAM Hack BUAP into an itinerant event in the future, being held at a different location every year.

Increase Faculty Engagement
- Involve more university faculty from various departments in event planning and execution, in particular from the Department of Philosophy and Literature who has the speciality in History, and the Faculty of Arts, which covers the performing arts.
- Leverage academic networks to broaden interdisciplinary participation.
- Establish mentoring and advising for the hackathon as a recognized cultural extension and outreach activity, allowing faculty to meet re-hiring requirements.

Refine Challenge Design
- Collaborate closely with challenge owners to improve clarity and precision when formulating their challenges; provide best practice examples and closely cooperate with colleagues who organize different hackathons at BUAP.
- Implement structured guidelines for challenge formulation, possibly supported by a specialized tool.
- Develop a continuity strategy for challenges based on engagement with executives from the different GLAM institutions at BUAP.

Secure long-term funding of the BAMhack BUAP
- Apply for a second year funding of Wikimedia CH
- Start implementing funding diversification strategy
  - In a first stage with University funds;
  - In a second stage with Federal and State funds;
  - thereby also associating individual GLAM institutions beyond BUAP.

6. Outlook

The future of the project is promising. Based on the potential we have identified by analyzing our first experience and speaking with BUAP directors, administrators, and professors, there is a commitment to consolidate and institutionalize the Hackathon at BUAP. More specifically, Hackatón BAM BUAP may be developed into a state-wide itinerant event that may even aspire to be replicated in other states.

However, before thinking about expansion, we will need to do our homework and improve in all the areas of opportunity discussed above. It is necessary to move to a stage of maturity and consolidation where Hackatón BAM BUAP is not just an event, but is truly embedded in a community, which initially will mainly be composed of members of the university community.

We will therefore prioritize the following actions:

Consolidate an organizing committee composed of faculty, administrators, and students
Secure funding by diversifying funds based on a more local design
Build support networks with other GLAM faculties and institutions at BUAP

7. Project Resources

7.1 Financial resources

The table below gives an overview of the financial resources of the project.

Overview of resources and expenses
Item	Budget MXN	Effective Costs / Revenue
Total Expenses in MXN	$108.261,500	$110.044,5
Food & Beverages	$11.500,00	$41.630.44
Accommodation Hostel	$37.500,00	$0
Project Coordination + Communication	$20.000,0	$20.000,00
Training / Outreach to Institutions	$20.000,00	$22.714,00
Side Events	$5.000,00	$2.500,00
Public Relations & Communication Materials	$4.000,00	$2.896,83
Onsite Tech Support	$5.000,0	$1.079,88
Gifts	$3.000,00	$1.091,7
Varia / Incidentals	$10.000,00	$6.839,55
Souvenirs	$0	$9.414,06

Total Revenues in MXN	$108.261,50	$108.166,47
Wikimedia CH Project Grant (5000CHF after conversion and bank fees)	$108.261,50	CHF 82,422
Surplus		$95,03

The project would not have possible without the kind financial contribution by Wikimedia CH in the form of a project grant of 5’000 CHF (approx. 110’000 MXN). The recorded surplus is within the limits of uncertainties linked to the currency conversion rate and amounts to 95 MXN (approx. 4.09 CHF) and will be carried over to next year’s hackathon, along with the remaining material that was purchased this year and can be reused next year.

ARPA BUAP, as well as the General Directorate of Libraries, offered us facilities and staff, and took charge of cleaning the spaces.

7.2 In-kind contributions

The organization of the event would not have been possible without the substantial in-kind contributions made by several individuals and organizations, most notably by contributing their volunteer and/or staff time:

Beat Estermann (Opendata.ch)
Sandra Palacios (ARPA)
Víctor Ruíz (ARPA)
Alfredo Avendaño (DGB)
Laura Fraguela (DGB)
Abraham Ronquillo (DGB)
Armando Vargas (Historical Archive)
Tony Meneses (Staff)
Jorge Miguel De Martino (Staff)
Vicente Méndez (Staff)

But also by allowing us to use their infrastructure and/or equipment: UARI BUAP at Centro Cultural Universitario Facultad de Artes Plásticas y Audiovisuales

8. Final Remarks

As can be seen from the results, the Hackathon BAM BUAP 2025 was a very successful event. We had the support of our university community and managed to overcome the challenges we faced. We would like to thank our main sponsor, Wikimedia CH, our main institutional supporters at BUAP, ARPA and DGB, and everyone who joined the project, even if they just found out in the process what it was all about. We are grateful to all the wonderful people who donated their time and effort to make this first GLAM hackathon in the State of Puebla possible. Their enthusiastic participation energizes us to continue working on this project; we can't wait to see what the second edition has in store.