RDA/IGAD Webinar Series: ‘Kampala INSPIRE Hackathon: an example of Capacity Development for Agriculture’
As part of The Research Data Alliance (RDA) Interest Group on Agricultural Data (IGAD) meeting focusing on IGAD/RDA : Sharing Experiences and Creating Digital Dialogues, Suchith Anand, GODAN presented a webinar during the ‘Europe/Asia’ group of presentations on May 27.
The webinar focused on ‘Kampala INSPIRE Hackathon: an example of Capacity Development for Agriculture.’ Open Earth Observations and Open Geospatial Information are key in supporting and achieving the 2030 agenda for Global Food Security. Hackathons provide an excellent opportunity for bringing together people from different disciplinary backgrounds to form teams around a problem or idea, and collaboratively co-create a unique solution to the problem from scratch.
The outputs generally take shape in the form of websites, webinars, applications, tools, policy papers, or processes. Traditionally hackathons are organized as on-site events with different groups working on different challenges which are then judged on diverse pre-agreed parameters. Though physical hackathons are considered to be more productive, they are also expensive to participants (with costs including travel, accommodation, venue costs, etc), which tend to exclude many potential participants. To obviate this challenge, virtual Hackathons are preferred as a good way of promoting inclusiveness and digital participative collaboration. In this presentation, we share experiences and lessons learned from a fully Virtual Hackathon. This enables anyone, from anywhere, to join and contribute to the Hackathon, thereby reducing the barriers to participation (esp. for people from low-income countries).
The Research Data Alliance (RDA) Interest Group on Agricultural Data (IGAD) meeting was set to be held in Rome (Italy) in April 2020 but instead, took place as a virtual meeting from May 25 to 28. The virtual meeting provided an online platform to continue to build upon collaborations, knowledge sharing and developing innovations with activities including panel sessions, group discussions and presentations.
Authors:
Suchith Anand
Dr. Suchith Anand is Chief Scientist at the Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition. He is an internationally recognised expert in geospatial science, providing guidance and advice to governments and international organisations on open education, open data and open science policies. He has authored a wide range of publications; from journal papers, scientific reports and book chapters, to keynote presentations and international strategy documents. Dr Anand has mentored over 1000 emerging leaders in sustainable development programs and initiatives worldwide through GeoForAll. He serves on the editorial boards of several scientific journals, is a member of numerous international scientific committees, and serves on the boards of many international organisations. He has been an invited speaker at the United Nations and has served as the founding chair of the ICA Commission on Open Source Geospatial Technologies. He is also the founding chair of Geospatial IG of the Research Data Alliance (RDA), contributing to advancing geospatial data science. As well as supervising many PhD, Masters and undergraduate students in geospatial science, Dr. Anand has been an external PhD examiner for UK and European Universities. He is leading open geospatial science through the establishment of Open Source Geospatial Labs/Research Centres in key universities worldwide as part of the GeoForAll initiative for bridging the geospatial digital divide. Dr. Anand co-founded GeoForAll with a vision to make geospatial education and digital economy opportunities accessible to all, enabling a better future for everyone.
