Cross-posting the announcement from the Wikimedia Blog. The details of the event are on Meta and we're also creating meetup.com pages for the local events. Check them out and RSVP if you're planning to attend – it'd be awesome to have folks from the wikidata community on-board. Looking forward to see you on November 9!

Dario, on behalf of the organizers

 

Last summer at Wikimania in Hong Kong, the annual global Wikimedia conference, we (a group of Wikipedia researchers) discussed how we could make wiki researchmore impactful. In our work in academia and on Wikimedia projects, we saw a host of missed opportunities to share ideas, hypotheses, code, and research methods. We set out to create a space to bring researchers together with Wikipedians and facilitate problem solving, discovery and innovation with the use of open data and open source tools. Labs² (L2) aims to build this space, by providing infrastructure and venues for collaborative wiki research.

Today we’re thrilled to announce the inaugural Wiki Research Hackathon – a global event hosted by Wikimedia Foundation researchers, academic researchers and Wikipedians from around the world on Saturday, November 9, 2013.

This hackathon is an opportunity for anyone interested in research on wikis, Wikipedia, and open collaboration to meet, share ideas, and work together. It is targeted at Wikipedia editors, students, researchers, coders and anyone interested in designing new tools, statistics and data visualization, and producing new knowledge about Wikimedia projects and their communities.

The goal of this event is to:

This hackathon will be held both as a series of local meetups (Perth, Mannheim, Oxford,Rio de Janeiro, Chicago, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Seattle, etc.) and virtual meetups (Asia/Oceania, Europe/Africa & The Americas) for those who can’t make it to the local events. An IRC channel (#wikimedia-labs^connect) and a Google Hangout open throughout the day will allow attendees to connect online.

Interested attendees can sign up for the event on Meta-wiki.

Local and virtual meetups are listed on theevent page. All you need to do is add your name to the list of participants for the event that makes sense for you.

For any question about the event (including volunteering for a local meetup), you can reach us at wrh@wikimedia.org or leave a message on the hackathon’s talk page on Meta-wiki. We look forward to seeing you on November 9.