As presented in the DINAcon 2023 talk by Stefan Barac and Markus Stolze

Key Learnings

1. all people are disabled: Explanation using the example of age groups
2. 99.9 % of today's products and services overload target groups
3. this is cognitive load and what it means for sales and people centring
4. how to combine physical and digital experiences to create inclusive experiences
5. a11y tests the best way to stay solvent while learning if you offer inclusion
6. two examples of systems that support the implementation of web accessibility

See also Bachelor Thesis by Mathias Lenz (autotranslated to English here)

We invite our peers and colleagues, really everyone who is interested in the art & science of Hackathons, Hackdays, Hacknights, and other time-limited / open / collaborative / experimental / hands-on workshops, to join us for a convivial discussion of the past and future of the field.

At Hack:Org:X meetings, we share best practices, followed by group discussion on critical questions and research directions. Our initial meetings have focused on topics like:

• where and how to deploy open tools and infrastructure for better hackathons;
• how to plan interventions that respond to social needs and crisis topics;
• who are the stakeholders, where is the momentum building;
• insights and retrospectives from hackathon crews around Switzerland

On May 4, our meeting in Basel was supported by the ⬢DRIBDAT collective, BaselHack and Baseltech.swiss. We explored ten challenges for hackathon organizers, documenting our thoughts in the comments: from making events more fair & accessible to having a better handbook and issuing certificates. We even started a new cooperative. See also: the recap / the results

This was closely followed by virtual exchanges, and a second in-person meeting on August 17 in Zürich, hosted by MakeZurich and ewz. Here we worked together on a Stakeholder Analysis, and heard from several researchers who are collecting data and making critical inquiries into the topic of hackathons. See also: the recap / the results

Many of our discussions involve topics that were prominent at DINAcon in the past. We look forward to follow-up with further Hackathon Organizers workshops, and a hands-on session at the DINAcon HACKnights! For more information, visit https://hackorgx.dribdat.cc/

Yannic Kilcher presented Open Assistant at the DINAcon 2023, sharing "A brief insight into the open source world in the field of artificial intelligence and where the data for it comes from."

See also:

• Mastodon post
• OpenAssistant on HuggingFace

Recommended intro resources from the LAION team:

• Contrastive https://lilianweng.github.io/posts/2021-05-31-contrastive/
• Embeddings https://rom1504.medium.com/semantic-search-at-billions-scale-95f21695689a
• Diffusion https://lilianweng.github.io/posts/2021-07-11-diffusion-models/

Open Assistant is now concluded as a project, so we can no longer use the interactive online chatbot. However, the source code and the model remains accessible through GitHub. We used HuggingChat (LLaMA 2) to generate some HACKnight challenges based on the Open Assistant's README.

{ hacknight challenges }

Create a simple chatbot that responds to basic user queries using pre-defined answers. The chatbot should be able to understand basic natural language inputs and respond accordingly.

Implement a rating system for the chatbot's responses. Users should be able to rate the helpfulness of the chatbot's responses, and the ratings should be used to improve the chatbot's performance over time.

Implement a reinforcement learning algorithm to train the chatbot to generate better responses over time. The algorithm should use the ratings from the intermediate challenge as feedback to improve the chatbot's performance. Additionally, implement a mechanism to allow users to provide additional feedback, such as suggestions for alternative responses, to further improve the chatbot's performance.

The Things Network (TTN) consists of an inclusive and open global community of people, companies, governments and universities who are learning, experimenting and building with LoRaWAN (low power, long-range), typically sensor-based data collection projects. We are supporting a scattered yet active community of open hardware tinkerers in Switzerland through events and Starter Kits. Support TTN and related open protocols by joining the Open Network Infrastructure Association! You can help us to improve bootstraps and badges for next year, and run the next edition of MakeZurich, TTN Bern, TTN Basel, and other activities in 2023.

🛠️ Join our workshop at Glue Software on December 4

💸 Donate at opennetworkinfrastructure.org

🔵 Follow at Open Collective

{ hacknight challenges }