Dickens Letters Hackathon

6pm on Friday 3 February to 5pm on Sunday 5 February
Birkbeck (University of London)

Interested in digging into datasets? Looking to meet like-minded hackers and software enthusiasts? Have ideas for digital approaches to literary and historical data you’d like to try out? Join us for a two-day event where, working in small teams, you can develop exciting ideas using the letters of Charles Dickens.

Expressions of Interest are invited for IT professionals, programmers, hackers and digital humanists. No significant prior knowledge of Dickens is required: an introduction to the context of the letters will be provided. You will work in teams of fellow hackers with a TEI-encoded dataset of Dickens’s letters over a weekend, with the aim of producing an idea for an innovative piece of software, an app or a game based on the letters of one of the most famous writers in English.

The event will include a free tour of the Charles Dickens Museum, and a chance to work intensively with other like-minded hackers over the course of a weekend. The event is free of charge, and refreshments will be provided. Prizes will be awarded for the best app or game, together with an opportunity to take your idea forward. The Charles Dickens Museum will be open to participants to visit at their leisure on the afternoon of Friday 3 February, before the start of the hackathon. If you have any questions, please contact editor@dickensletters.com.

You can register your interest here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeSI7EiyMLbybpYcSbn-682dNgbI-HQ32lJLea_2yE3zHMGFQ/viewform

Leon Litvack & Emily Bell
Editors, the Charles Dickens Letters Project
https://dickensletters.com/