By Shoaib Sufi, Community Lead

If you are a PhD candidate, Jisc are offering a bursary for you to attend CW17— apply now!

Collaborations Workshop 2017 (CW17) is nearly upon us. It takes place from the 27-29th of March 2017 at the Leeds University Business school.

Day one will have you enthralled with knock out keynotes on The Internet of Things (IoT) and Open Data from real experts who have been there and done it. If you want to know more about this area and can only spare a day, you can choose to come along just for the day. Day one also includes a panel on IoT and Open Data with leading experts from industry, academia and publishing. We then have our signature speed blogging session, where you can write a blog collaboratively about a hot discussion topic. We wrap up day one with a mini-workshop session where you get to explore some of the topics raised in more depth. Evening of day one then moves onto a historical tour of the campus, a time to get cultured and connect with other attendees, and then a workshop dinner in the lovely University House.

Day two starts with an optional tour of the canal’s of Leeds. It’s sure to offer a unique view on a city with so much history and happenings. Lighting talks, two-minute presentations, dominate the morning, followed by a collaborative ideas session where attendees form teams to develop ideas which could be taken forward and  implemented in the Hackday. Kenji Takeda of Microsoft (our premier sponsor) will  talk about Open Data, IoT and Cloud, so if you can only make it to day two you will still be informed and entertained about these key topics. Further mini workshops explore the use of the free SparkFun boxes attendees receive, understanding work being done in evaluating software and a workshop on licensing and IP by our friends at qLegal amongst others.

Day two also include an international question and answer panel covering software sustainability initiatives worldwide, training, legal, research software engineering and commercialisation—it’s bound to be informative and inspiring! We close the main part of CW17 with a prize for the best collaborative idea and a thank you!

The CW17 Hackday starts on the evening of day two. But just before this, there is an interlude: a trip to a local Museum to see one of its special private collections. The evening will commence with some guidance on tooling, data management and some words from our sponsors if you are using SparkFun or want to hear about particular datasets you could use. There will be the mandatory pizza and drinks to get people fuelled up to code, specify, write and design. The pitches are then made, followed by the buzz of  team formation.

Day three starts early with coffee and lunch times schedules. This day is  mainly head down and making stuff interspersed by integrations and sometimes animated conversations. Our CW17 judges will be making the round to see how teams are doing. The afternoon will see  presentations and then awarding the sought-after CW17 prizes. 

It’s set to be fun, informative, inspiring, collaborative and unique so register today!