Kicking off Coding da Vinci in Berlin
By Wiebke Hauschildt (Online editor)
Every good event contains a huge scandal. This is also true of the kick-off weekend of Coding da Vinci, our cultural hackathon, in Berlin on 21st/22nd October 2017. Now in this case, the scandal mentioned took place quite a while ago. It concerns, respectively concerned, an opera singer, an employee of the Reichsbahn (German National Railway) and historical railway tickets from the mid 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century, which the Berlin Verkehrs- und Baumuseum (Museum of Transport and Construction) bought in 1926 – from the opera singer, however, and not from the railway employee. You can somewhat understand the railway employee being annoyed, and yet the opera singer Fritz Hellmuth had travelled further in his life and his collection was therefore more extensive. Today this largest accumulation of historical tickets in the world is to be found in the historical archives of the Stiftung Deutsches Technikmuseum (German Museum of Technology Foundation) in Berlin and this has digitised the tickets and brought them, together with the scandal, into the Coding da Vinci.
Specifically, more than 120 developers, creative persons and designers came together for two days with representatives from 19 different cultural institutions from Berlin, Brandenburg and Leipzig, as well as the organisers - Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek, digitising offices in Berlin, Open Knowledge Foundation and Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. – to discover what you can do with open cultural data.
The data: Colourful insects, historical newspapers and the Berlin attitude to life
Each of the 19 institutions, which altogether had brought along a total of 31 data sets, had one minute to present their data to the participants in the “one minute madness”. This was, however, only supposed to be a foretaste and to help the developers and creative persons to narrow down the choice for their project idea. After these one minute presentations, the respective holdings were then presented and discussed in more detail in 15 minute sessions.
With this year’s focus on Berlin-Brandenburg – the birthplace of Coding da Vinci – the data holdings were as heterogeneous and exciting as the institutions which had brought them along. To name but a few:
The Museum für Naturkunde (National History Museum) had even brought along five collections including, among others, high-resolution spherical image sequences of biological collection objects – for the most part insects. For these image sequences, scientists at the Museum für Naturkunde had constructed a machine, which makes it possible to photograph the insects from all directions. This is where the importance of digitisation comes to the fore: in some instances the “type specimens” of the insects only exist in the museum’s holdings. If they are lost before they have been digitised, the whole species will have to be re-discovered – if it still exists.
The Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz (Berlin State Library – Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation) has digitised a wide range of historically significant newspapers from the time before the foundation of the German Reich (Empire) up to the first years of the Second World War, whilst the Berlinische Galerie had their “Heinrich Zille set of works” with them. Zille’s complete photographic estate – 152 original prints and more than twice this number of glass negatives – shows the attitude to life of the people who live in Berlin.
And there was so much more…
The ideas: Interplanetary data storage, newsflashes from the past and the Ticket Memory game
After the detailed data presentations and some time to develop ideas, it now occurred what everyone had been waiting for: the ideas pitch. A total of 25 ideas were presented by the teams, 21 of these made it into the Coding da Vinci Hackdash.
Creativity ranged here from “interplanetary data storage”, which wishes to safeguard digitised cultural assets (via an interplanetary file system and blockchain) against man-made and natural disasters in the long term, up to newsflashes from the past: an app, based on the digitised historical newspapers of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, should be developed here, which brings historical headlines as push messages onto the smartphones of this world. And perhaps historical personal ads at the same time.
The historical railway tickets already mentioned have also made it into the Hackdash; in the “Ticket Memory game” you have to remember trains, places and journeys. It can be played with and without children, analogue and digital. By the way, we are still looking for programmers.
Outlook for 2018: From north to south, from east to west
If there was only one Coding da Vinci this year and in past years, then there are several planned at the same time in Cultural Heritage Year 2018 (Sharing Heritage): a spring opening with Coding da Vinci Ost (east) in cooperation with the Leipzig University Library; in autumn a new version of Coding da Vinci Nord (north) in Hamburg and the first regional hackathon “west” at the Mainz University Library. A Coding da Vinci Süd (south) is being discussed with the Landesstelle für Nichtstaatliche Museen (Regional Office for non-State Museums) in Munich. And then? Coding da Vinci will be networked within the scope of the Cultural Heritage Year in Europe – the Coding da Vinci blog will report exactly how.
However, the cultural hackers are now entering the six-week development, respectively sprint phase. The results will be presented and prizes awarded in the Jewish Museum Berlin on 2nd December.
At this point we would like to thank all those who have contributed to making this exceptional event possible and we wish the teams lots of fun and success and look forward to the fantastic results!
Coding da Vinci – The cultural hackathon is a collaboration project of the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek (DDB), the Open Knowledge Foundation Germany e. V. (OKF DE), the Digitisation Service Centre Berlin (digiS) and Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. (WMDE) and an official contribution to the European Cultural Heritage Year 2018 in Germany of the Deutsche Nationalkomitee für Denkmalschutz (DNK) (German National Committee for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage).