Wiki Loves Collective Memories/Cultural Hackathons
What is a cultural hackathon?
[edit]A hackathon is an event format and methodology that brings together groups of people from diverse backgrounds to collaborate on the creation and development of projects. The event typically comprises a project pitching session, followed by a phase of intense group work, and ends with the presentation of the projects. Typically, hackathons last 2-3 consecutive days. Sometimes, they are stretched over a longer period of time to give participants more time to work on their projects. Hackathons have been used intensively by the open data movement to encourage data publication and interaction between data providers and data users.
A cultural hackathon (or open cultural data hackathon) is a hackathon focusing on the re-use of cultural and/or heritage data. As shown by many years of experience with this format in Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Finland, and other countries, cultural 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. Participants typically comprise cultural heritage specialists, software developers, data specialists, researchers, designers, artists, and Wikipedians. A majority of hackathon projects typically involve Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons, and/or Wikipedia in some form, and data providers may be encouraged to publish their data and content on Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata.
The projects pursued during a cultural hackathon may cover one or several of the following aspects: data publication and interlinking, application development, research (e.g. in the digital humanities), artistic creation (plastic arts, visual arts, performing arts, etc.), game development (online or offline games), know-how transfer (digital technologies, data publication, artistic techniques, etc.), or the publication and enhancement of Wikipedia articles. Over the course of the hackathon, projects may reach different maturity levels, depending on their complexity and the level of preparation of the project team. Thus, at the final presentation at the end of the event, projects may comprise one or several of the following: a project idea, accompanied by some ideas and mock-ups; a fully elaborated concept; a proof of concept or feasibility study; a functional prototype; or a finished application, product or artistic creation.
Implementation context
[edit]This how-to draws on ten years of experience with the Swiss Open Cultural Data Hackathon (GLAMhack), an itinerant event taking place in a different Swiss city every year. It is organized by the OpenGLAM working group of the Opendata.ch association (composed of heritage institutions, academic institutions, Wikimedia CH, and several long-term volunteers), in close cooperation with the host institution (typically a heritage institution and/or a university).
In the course of a cooperation project with the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla (BUAP) in 2024-2025, the Swiss hackathon concept was ported to Puebla (Mexico), where the cultural hackathon is being organized by the Facultad de Artes Plásticas y Audiovisuales in collaboration with the Dirección General de Bibliotecas (DGB).
In the light of the experiences of the Swiss GLAMhack, the following particularities of the BUAP hackathon can be highlighted:
- The hackathon is being 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 and its cultural heritage institutions.
- Social Service is a mandatory activity that BUAP students must complete in order to obtain their bachelor's degree. This framework has been an invaluable source of human resources for the organization of the event.
- Unlike the Swiss GLAMhack, which has only seen sporadic participation by artists, the Hackathon BAM BUAP 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).
- 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 requires sensitization especially among students of software engineering, this appears to be the right positioning of the event if the focus is on the promotion of the know-how exchange, networking, collaboration, and cross-fertilization between various professional communities.
The most important take-away from the above is that the concept of each hackathon will need to be tailored to the specific implementation context; what works well in one setting may not work in another setting, no matter how hard you try. Below you will find some further ideas on how to adapt the concept to your specific setting.
Preparation
[edit]You will need a project team and a host institution that are committed to implementing the hackathon. Project preparation and implementation will require about one year. You will most likely find that some of the organizational tasks will need to be carried out by paid staff if you want to avoid overloading the volunteers in your team. Many tasks are however best carried out by a team of volunteers that are part of the wider network of participants you want to reach.
The main roles that need to be filled are:
- project coordination;
- programme committee (responsible for the design of the programme and the facilitation during the event);
- dataset team (responsible for the outreach to data providers);
- logistics / catering;
- communications.
The event budget will typically include major expenditure items for:
- food and drinks during the event;
- staff expenses for project coordination and communications;
- accommodation of participants (if you are planning to involve participants who do not live within commuting distance of the event venue);
as well as some minor expenditure items for:
- side events;
- technical infrastructure (and support);
- public relations and communication materials;
- gifts and give-aways;
- incidentals.
Implementation Plan
[edit]A model implementation plan is provided below; it will need to be adapted / concretized in the light of the concrete implementation context.
| Phase | Description | Goals / Deliverables |
|---|---|---|
| Phase 1 | Initialization / Setup |
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| Phase 2 | Preparation |
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| Phase 3 | Final Preparations and Event |
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| Phase 4 | Wrap-up |
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Possible variations of the concept
[edit]The concept may be adapted in a variety of ways to respond to the requirements of a concrete implementation context:
- The number of participants may vary: The ideal size of a larger hackathon is around 60 to 90 participants, given that the idea pitching session and the final project presentation session take place in a plenary setting. But you could also hold a medium-sized hackathon with 30 to 40 participants or a small hackathon with only 10 to 15 participants working in 3 to 4 teams.
- The key target groups may vary (professional background, age groups, etc.); the heterogeneity of the participants is however key to success if you want to encourage exchange across professional and organizational boundaries.
- The hackathon challenges may be pre-defined by the organizers, they may be gathered through an open call ahead of the event, and/or participants may be invited to pitch challenges and corresponding project ideas at the beginning of the event. To nudge the participants in a certain direction, an overall thematic focus may be defined for the hackathon.
- You may configure your event in a variety of ways: the actual hackathon may be extended by adding pre-events or side-events (e.g. workshops, visits to heritage institutions, etc.); the final project presentations may be organized several weeks after the actual hackathon event, in order to give teams more time to work on their projects; or a series of shorter hackdays or hacknights could be held instead of a 36 or 48-hour hacking “marathon”.
- You may choose a competitive format; note that the German cultural hackathon Coding Da Vinci was successfully implemented as a competitive event over nearly a decade. In the case of the Swiss GLAMhack, the idea of a competitive format was rejected by the community.
- You may decide to hold the hackathon online. Very positive experiences with online hackathons have been made during the Covid lockdown, as they facilitate the involvement of participants worldwide. It is doubtful however whether participants would favor this format in the absence of very specific constraints. An important downside of online hackathons is that informal exchange between teams (e.g. during breaks, during meals, at the shared accommodation, while spontaneously giving a hand to another team, etc.) is very limited.
- You may decide to encourage participants to also produce tangible project outputs, in the form of physical prototypes. To this effect, you may provide material and technical equipment for prototyping as well as access to a maker space. Note, however, that a classical make-a-thon will typically require an additional day (and last 60 hours instead of 36 hours), involve fewer participants, and require a more structured moderation approach during the event. You will most likely find that: (i) there are practical deadlines for the purchase of missing material; (ii) the simultaneous use of the same equipment by several teams may lead to bottlenecks; (iii) and that some production processes (e.g. 3D printing) require a certain amount of time to be completed.
- You may combine a cultural hackathon with Wikipedia editing activities. While it is rather straightforward to include edit-a-thon type challenges in a cultural hackathon, a cultural hackathon and a GLAM edit-a-thon are two rather different event formats. You may achieve better results if you keep the two apart.