A Worthy Event: EcoHackNYC

Posted in Learning Experiences on April 19 2012, by Ann Rafalko

Ed. note: This is a guest post from Andrew Hill, Senior Scientist at Vizzuality, a small company specializing in data, GIS, and the Web. As an organization that is deeply concerned with biodiversity and conservation, the Garden is invested in using technology as a scientific tool, and I feel EcoHackNYC is an event worth sharing with the rest of the New York-area scientific community. If you’re a scientist or researcher, please consider joining this event. — Ann

This weekend, for the second time in under a year, we are throwing an event to bring together scientists, developers, designers, and others to work collaboratively on environmental projects that matter. We call this event EcoHackNYC. It is a free (un)conference where a small group of people present projects, problems, or data they think need to be developed, and then larger groups of enthusiasts and experts work tirelessly to develop solutions (also check out last year’s event here). For us, this is a special event.

We have been working primarily on projects in biodiversity, conservation, and the environment, guided by a genuine passion and belief in the societal value of such projects and a love of working in domains that present multifaceted challenges, not the least of which is visually explaining meaningful knowledge. We are optimistic that scientific research results will drive forward new ways of understanding and communicating scientific information and will ultimately improve the world around us.

EcoHackNYC was conceived to help reduce one major obstacle in the way of the science we love: scientists, technologists, and designers have very few forums to cross-fertilize and forge new collaborations. Please come and join us with all of your beautiful ideas and diverse talents to help drive forward the technologies and solutions we so desperately need.

Registration for this event is still open.