ePub / eBook Hackday

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This is a free two day DevCSI hackday which includes free accommodation and food and organised in conjunction with the JISC funded Metadata Forum. The event hopes to bring together software developers, project managers and users particularly (though not exclusively) in Higher Education who share an interest in eBooks and particularly the open ePub standard for ebooks. Developers and users rarely have opportunities to experiment in a focussed way in hacking systems, experimenting with standards, and exploring current ways of doing things and how they could be improved. If this is you, would you like to explore the possibility of doing some innovative things using the standard or the various open source tools available?

We would very much like developers and 'users' to work together in small teams (teams can be formed before or during the event) to work intensively on an idea over two days; brainstorming, planning, prototyping and even producing a demonstrator. Events like these are sometimes called 'Hackdays' and we will be encouraging developers/users to talk about the systems/hacks they have created and how they can be manipulated to work with other systems. If you are new to Hackdays, you can see the previous 'DevCSI Hackday' here we ran which focussed around reading list management systems. We hope these teams will come up with some imaginative and innovative ideas and the event will hopefully culminate in a series of presentations from each team and the work they have carried out.

We are also delighted to announce that Kovid Goyal, the principle creator of Calibre (a very widely used open source software for the management of ebooks with over 2 million downloads) will be the main speaker and one of the main facilitators for the event.  We also hope to have Mikhail Gusarov of OpenInkpot, which is a free and open-source Linux distribution for eBook reading devices, as a speaker and facilitator. We have also left space in the programme for plenty of lightning talks by other speakers, so contact us if you would like to talk about a project or issue you would like to share with everyone by using the booking form.

Places are limited, so book early, as we anticipate a lot of demand for this pre Christmas hack event! Just bring a laptop, an ebook reader (if you have one) and lots of ideas and enthusiasm! Before the event we want you to discuss ideas, form teams etc. by joining the newly created mailing list http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/EPUB-EBOOKS (epub-ebooks@jiscmail.ac.uk). We will be posting messages on there in the next few days to start discussions going.