Announcing the second Life Itself Research Hackathon

The second Life Itself Research Hackathon takes place Fri 10th -Sat 11th May 2024. It's a chance to come together to work on projects and ideas connected with making a radically wiser, weller world.

Apr 19, 2024

We are excited to announce the second Life Itself Research Hackathon, a chance to come together to work on projects and ideas connected with the Life Itself Research Community. It will take place on Friday 10th-Saturday 11th May 2024.

What's a hackathon? See below.

Our focus will be on mapping and making sense of the "Second Renaissance" ecosystem, e.g. expanding and curating a knowledgebase of key actors, initiatives, ideas, concepts, practices, communities and more. 🌍 -- read more below in👇Theme for the Hackathon.

This Hackathon supports the EU-funded Cohere+ project, which Life Itself is undertaking in partnership with The Hague Center, The Institute for Integral Studies (IFIS), Emerge, and the Ekskäret Foundation.

This is a free event open to all and you can join online -- or in person if you want to come to our Bergerac Hub (we'd love to meet and hang out in person!). If you're interested, fill out the registration form:

At the inaugural Life Itself Research Hackathon in June 2023, we had over a dozen participants and more than six projects completed. 🎉 You can read a recap of last year's event here.

Details

- What: Have fun creating together around the theme of research for a "Second Renaissance". Note: you can work on any project you like including your own personal one. More detail on theme below.

- When: Friday 10th May 5pm to Saturday 11th May 7pm (European time)

- Where: Online on Zoom and at the Bergerac Hub. Please get in touch as soon as possible if you'd like to come in person so that we can share more information to arrange your stay.

- Who: All welcome!

- Register: Register here with Google Forms

- Schedule: Kick-off Friday 10th May at 1700 CEST. Wrap-up Saturday 11th May at 1730 CEST. Full schedule below.

- More questions? See FAQs below

Theme for the Hackathon

This Hackathon focuses on mapping and making sense of the Second Renaissance ecosystem🌍. You are also welcome to bring your own ideas and projects connected with our broader research community topics.

In this project, Life Itself are leading the work on ‘Mapping the Field and Sensemaking of the Map’. The specific objectives of this work package are to:

Identify and cohere the ideas, methods and tools scattered across the field, so that these can be used for the education and capacity-building of European citizens;
Provide actors in the field with access to a coherent stock of strategically useful information - such as the identities, activities, strategies and values of potential collaborators and aligned change agents - which can inform their efforts to improve European society
Make the activities, missions and values within the field more visible to mainstream society so that citizens are empowered with greater knowledge and awareness of alternative forms of learning and ways to participate in civic society to co-create social change;
Map the needs and training required for transition to a new European civic culture so that this knowledge can inform educational resource creation and training design in other work packages. Gain a preliminary understanding of how these may be met using tools, methods and ideas within the field, ready for further analysis in later work packages.

N.B. More broadly at Life Itself Research, we are also interested in the ecosystem beyond Europe.

For more detail about the Cohere+ project activities and objectives, see here.

Schedule of the Hackathon

- 🌱 Kick-off: Friday 10th May 5-6pm CEST

- 🔆 Check-in: Saturday 11th May 11-12pm CEST

- 🌳 Wrap-up & Project presentations: Saturday 11th May 5:30-7pm CEST

- 🤝 Self-organised co-creation in between! Buddy up with people in similar timezones to work on something together.

Extra: Join us for pre-Hackathon virtual co-working Friday 11am-5pm CEST, if you'd like to get together early (drop in when you like).

FAQs

What skills should I have to attend?

Curiosity is the only essential.

You do **not** need a background in research or academia.

What if I don't have a project?

No worries! We will have projects you can join.

What if I have an idea for a project that's outside of the theme?

Great! Let us know in the registration form.

Can I join for part of the Hackathon?

We recommend joining for the Kick-off if you can, but the Saturday morning check-in could also be a good moment to join. Let us know if you'd like to chat about this further.

What is a hackathon?

A hackathon (also known as a hack day; a portmanteau of hacking and marathon) is an event where people engage in rapid and collaborative engineering over a relatively short period of time such as 24 or 48 hours. As this event is hosted by the Life Itself Research community we will be working on research projects that aren't exclusively confined to coding.