Worldwide Aaron Swartz Memorial Hackathons

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NB: Current planning has moved to Worldwide_Aaron_Swartz_Memorial_Hackathon_Series

In memory of hacktivist Aaron Swartz, there were a series of hackathons around the world in Jan.-Feb., 2013 dedicated to understanding Aaron's work and keeping his projects alive. This page is intended as a record of what was done at each of these hackathons. If you'd like to suggest project ideas or help organize stuff, see the coordination spreadsheet. You can contact the main coordinator for the worldwide effort via email.

In order to provide some online continuity between events please feel free to use the #aaronsw IRC channel, and the #aaronsw tag.

Tehran[edit | edit source]

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Beirut[edit | edit source]

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We, at Lamba Labs, are joining the global hackerspace community with a memorial hack-a-thon and build night, in memory of Aaron Swartz. In order to answer Swartz's call for social change, we're humbly hosting a build night focused on projects that are geared towards social change in Lebanon, such as: creating a website for the country's Anti-Racism project, visualizing election data to prevent corruption, creating a low-power device for emergency broadcasting of location, creating artwork for public street installations to nurture public awareness…

Everyone's welcome to join and collaborate on existing projects or work on their own projects.

Bangalore[edit | edit source]

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Report[edit | edit source]

Here is a link to the playlist containing three videos from the Aaron Swartz Memorial Hacknight: http://hasgeek.tv/hasgeek/aaronsw-hacknight.

According to Kiran:

A more detailed report is in the works and will be added soon!

Cambridge, UK[edit | edit source]

  • Organizers: adys.wh at gmail

Tokyo[edit | edit source]

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  • Dates:
  • Location:
  • Organizers: @jonwaller
  • Website:

Skopje / Zagreb / Belgrade / Ljubljana / Bratislava[edit | edit source]

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Vienna[edit | edit source]

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Paris[edit | edit source]

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A full gathering of hackers and data liberationists stayed through the night at Fabelier coding and organizing. Much energy coalesced around a controversial agreement between the national library and private corporations concerning book scanning, where the companies gain limited exclusive rights to the content scanned.

A Google Doc was used to organize thoughts and research: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LZ9PuJ-FeSBgrRWyTB3MXVjbVYQn4ztyLj1-GazKhBc/edit#heading=h.jvd48x78h9qc

Some photos from the night of the 26th: http://numm.org/~rmo/asw-paris/

St. Erme[edit | edit source]

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  • Dates: sometime in Jan 17 - 27
  • Location: PAF, St. Erme, France
  • Organizers: joshuah@mit.edu, njoliat@mit.edu
  • Website:

Amsterdam[edit | edit source]

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It went remarkably well (immo ;-) with 18 people in attendance (we had invited ca 25), from a relatively broad spectrum of backgrounds. Our intention was a no-pretense, convivial and conversational get together around a table (a big square in our case). The setting of the historic Anatomic Theatre (portrayed by Rembrandt) contributed also to the 'right' atmosphere with a large projection of Aaron holding a glass of (wine? beer? juice? hard liquor? ;-) and smiling to us.

We started with everyone reading for herself the translation of a letter by an Italian friend expressing some doubts about the hype around Aaron after his death, and our turbo-charged, technology addicted life-style in general. This was intended to steer the ensuing conversation away from mere 'more of the same' pronouncements toward self-reflexion and tuning down our ambitions and self-importance. It succeeded immo as a lively dialogue ensued about the reach and the limits of what we can do to combat the very forces that appeared to have contributed to Aaron's demise in the end.

As the attendance was quite varied (though as one of the participants rightly remarked, still limited to the 'digerati'), there was a good exchange of information and experiences, and people did indeed liaise in order to try to initiate fresh, and maybe unexpected, collaborative ventures.

We of course did not manage to tackle all issues that the occasion inspired us to consider, but that was to be expected - and in fact to be welcomed. Just as life itself, this was a (small) step in a never ending work-in-progress, and for progress. And it was heartening to see a consensus on fundamental values and a shared commitment to uphold them.

Raising a goblet of Schiedam Genever, the traditional West African custom to honour the departed, we closed the session with a reading of the last sentences of Jens Stoltenberg's remembrance speech for the Oslo/Utoya tragedy, which we think holds universal truth: "Realise the shortness of existence, remember the good times we had together, and honour the dead by celebrating life".

(A fuller report - in Dutch - is posted at http://waag.org/nl/blog/im-aaron-swartz)

Rio de Janeiro[edit | edit source]

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San Francisco[edit | edit source]

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Stanford Law School[edit | edit source]

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Boston[edit | edit source]

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New York[edit | edit source]

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Washington DC[edit | edit source]

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Chicago (Braintree)[edit | edit source]

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  • Dates: Feb 14 17:00
  • Location: Braintree 111 North Canal Street #455, Chicago, IL 60606
  • Organizers: chicago@python.org, brianhray@gmail.com
  • Website: http://chipy.org

Chicago (Pumping Station: One)[edit | edit source]

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Vancouver[edit | edit source]

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Presenters at Vancouver Hack Space get laser-cut tokens, which this time also had a portrait of AaronSw embossed onto them.

Super Happy Hacker House is a regular hack/socializing/lightning talks event at Vancouver Hack Space. We renamed it Super Sad Hacker House for this evening. There was a large portrait of Aaron added to the space for the day. I (Neil K) opened the lightning talks with a brief presentation on AaronSw and we had a moment of silence. I don't know of any hacking project that anyone's working on in Aaron's memory specifically.

Berlin (co.up)[edit | edit source]

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NOTE: This is **not** the November 2013 event, for this event, please see: http://berlin.aaronswartzhackathon.org/ and https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Worldwide_Aaron_Swartz_Memorial_Hackathon_Series

We get together for a day, discuss what needs fixing on today’s internet and then go and fix it.

Berlin (c-base)[edit | edit source]

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