We’re holding a Hackathon on August 13-18. right after Wikimania, in Potsdam, New York (about 2.5 hours drive from Montreal). The focus is on writing code to help produce offline collections of Wikipedia content along with other medical & educational materials, mostly for use in libraries, schools and clinics. The main wiki page can be found at http://OFF.NETWORK. We can probably help you with transportation from Montreal, and accommodation in Potsdam if you need it.

Some of the attendees will be there from familiar offline groups such as Kiwix mainly to write code. Others focus on end-use and are from the non-profit/educational community, such as Computers for Kids, Internet-in-a-box, KA Lite. These people will want to ensure that the technical needs of the groups can be met, and that resources are shared. You can see the sort of thing Internet-in-a-Box does in this recent article on opensource.com: https://opensource.com/article/17/5/internet-in-a-box-raspberry-pi

If you’re interested in attending, it’s probably best to contact me directly. Thanks!

Martin A. Walker (walkerma on Wikipedia)

Professor of Chemistry, SUNY Potsdam