iDigBio (www.idigbio.org) and Zooniverse's Notes from Nature Project (www.notesfromnature.org) are pleased to announce the CitStitch Hackathon. The goal of the hackathon is to build interoperability among projects thus further enabling public participation in biocollections digitization in useful and exciting ways. There are approximately 1 billion specimens of this type in US collections alone, but it is estimated that just 10% of them are currently digitized and online. Digitization of biodiversity research collections grants researchers and the public access to vast quantities of information needed for addressing questions related to climate change, invasive species, and the extinction crisis. The magnitude of the task of bringing those collections into digital format exceeds that of any single organization and will require new, Internet-scale approaches to engage the public. This is an exciting opportunity to work on a ground-breaking citizen-science endeavor with immediate and strong impacts in the areas of biodiversity and applied conservation.
The event will occur from December 3–5, 2014, at iDigBio in Gainesville, FL. There is up to $1500 for support of travel, lodging, and meals for each participant.
Two or more development tracks will be identified by hackathon participants during one or more remote meetings prior to the hackathon. These tracks could involve such things as (1) innovative cross-platform ways to deploy and manage public participation projects, (2) services for data analysis and visualization to engage the public or inform project management, (3) novel ways to advertise and grow public participation projects, or (4) ingestion of crowdsourced data into biodiversity collection data management systems. The CitStitch Hackathon is being organized by Austin Mast (Florida State University) and Rob Guralnick (University of Colorado–Boulder), with input from an organizing committee additionally composed of Ben Brumfield, Libby Ellwood, Paul Flemons, Ed Gilbert, Greg Newman, and Nelson Rios.
**If you wish to be considered for one of about 5–7 open invitations (of a total of about 30), please send (1) your CV/resume, (2) a short description (<250 words) of your relevant expertise (citing example products where appropriate), (3) a short description of the functionality that you'd like to develop in this domain, and (4) the days that you can attend to Austin Mast (amast@bio.fsu.edu) by Monday, September 1, for assured consideration. We especially encourage qualified graduate students and postdoctoral scholars to apply.**
With best regards,
Austin and Rob
Austin Mast ____________________________________
Associate Professor · Director, Robert K. Godfrey Herbarium · Associate Editor, Systematic Biology and Systematic Botany · Treasurer, American Society of Plant Taxonomists · Executive Committee Member, iDigBio, The National Resource for Advancing Digitization of Biodiversity Collections
Department of Biological Science · 319 Stadium Drive · Florida State University · Tallahassee, FL 32306-4295 · U.S.A.
Office is King Life Science Building, room 4065 · Lab is King Life Science Building, rooms 4068 and 4084 · Herbarium is Biological Science Unit One, room 100
Voice: 1 (850) 645-1500 · Fax: 1 (850) 645-8447 · amast@bio.fsu.edu ____________________________________