The UAB to host the Wikimedia Hackathon 2018

The association "Amical Wikimedia" and the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona are organising next year's Wikimedia Hackathon. This important event brings together developers from around the world aiming to improve the technological infrastructure of Wikipedia and other sister projects.

23/05/2017

At the closing session of the Wikimedia Hackathon 2017, which took place in Vienna on Sunday 21 May, the organisers announced that the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona would be hosting the following edition of the Wikimedia Hackathon, organised by the association Amical Wikimedia.

This is the first time that a Wikimedia Hackathon will be held in a city of Southern Europe. Previous editions of the hackathon have been held in Berlin (2011 and 2012), Amsterdam (2013), Zurich (2014), Lyon (2015) and Jerusalem (2016).

The proposal will make the UAB School of Engineering the main venue for the Wikimedia Hackathon. The UAB has already collaborated in numerous Wikipedia projects, such as the projects Archaeopedia, Wikiclassics, Quality Management and Embedded Systems.

In this edition alone, held in Vienna, over 250 participants attended from around the world, including a delegation from Amical Wikimedia. The hackathons attracts developers from several different countries who present new tools and work jointly to improve Wikimedia's projects. This year for example the first accomplishments of a collaborative visual editor were presented and a mentoring programme was launched.

The Amical Wikimedia association was officially recognised in 2013 by the Wikimedia Foundation and three years ago it received the National Culture Prize by the Government of Catalonia.