Hacking Away on the Thin Ice of a New Day
September 12th, 2008 by RoyI suppose it was inevitable. OCLC has been thinking differently lately, and this is just one more example. Besides opening up access to a tremendous amount of data and services to software access via Grid Services, we’re also trying to help developers in libraries, museums, archives, and beyond use these services productively.
Our latest method of doing this is by sponsoring a two-day Hackathon in New York City. Co-sponsored by NYPL Labs, we wil be providing power, wi-fi, food, and a t-shirt (see image) to anyone who wants to come and mess around with APIs and see what damage we can do.
We’re charging a $30 “nuisance fee” to discourage folks from signing up and not coming, since we’re limited in the number of participants we can accommodate, but frankly if that would prevent you from coming then let’s talk. It isn’t about the money. We’ve also put up a wiki page where people can set up ride and room sharing.
If this event is successful, and we have every reason to believe it will, then we may take it on the road. If you’d like to see an event like this in your area, drop me a line. I hope to see you there!
Related posts:
September 12th, 2008 at 4:36 pm
I can’t wait for this! I’m hoping that I can make the Friday, as I’ve got a prior engagement at another conference for Saturday. Thanks for all your hard work, both to you and my colleagues at NYPL.
September 17th, 2008 at 3:47 am
Roy, sounds interesting. But I was wondering, in what sense are the services you refer to “Grid services”? I get a a little worried by the term, noting David de Roure’s characterisation of grid (or perhaps GRID) efforts as “heroic”. Do you mean Globus/OGSA style Grids, or perhaps cloud computing, or perhaps web services, or… what?
September 19th, 2008 at 7:44 am
Chris, as you know “grid computing” is defined as a distributed network of hardware resources. Likewise, we consider “grid services” to be a distributed and growing network of data and web services, of which our OCLC Grid Services are a part. We realize that there may be some initial confusion with the term, but we like the analogy of putting our data and services out there on the data and services “grid” that includes data and services from many other players and we’re willing to explain it.