Following on from the success of the professional Liverpool Hacks and Hackers event in July, Scraperwiki, in partnership with Open Labs, is running a “Student Edition” of the Hacks and Hackers Hack Day for students from both LJMU’s School of Journalism and the School of Computing & Mathematical Sciences.

It will take place in Liverpool on Wednesday December 8, 2010 from 9.30am to 5pm at Liverpool John Moores University’s Art and Design Academy.

• LJMU students book at this link

So what’s this hack day all about? This event is a practical day demonstrating programming & design techniques, creating online news stories and features based on datasets, culminating in a final prize giving session for the most interesting and well presented projects. This practical day will demonstrate how student coders, programmers, web developers and designers will pair up with student journalists to produce projects and stories based around publicly available data.

Who’s it for? We want to attract students with skills in journalism, data visualisation, design, coding, programming, statistics and games development etc.

What will you get out of it? The aim is to show students journalists how to use programming and design techniques to create online news stories and features; and vice versa, to show student coders/developers/programmers how to find, develop, and polish stories and features.

What should participants bring? We would encourage students to come along with ideas for local ‘datasets’ that they are interested in.  Flexibility is key for this event. If you have a laptop, please bring this too.

But what exactly will happen on the day itself? Armed with laptops and WIFI, students will be put into teams of around four to develop ideas, with the aim of finishing final projects that can be published and shared publicly. Each team will then present their project to the whole group.

Overall winners will receive a prize at the end of the day. Food and drink will be provided during the day! Any more questions? Please get in touch via aine[at]scraperwiki.com.