hackathon.json Specification

A standard data format for publishing evidence of public participation in technical events.

Overview

Our goals are to have a shared and linked metadata and data model for opening data from and about hackathons. Here we describe how this may be published in the JSON serialization for Linked Data (JSON-LD, or just json) format.

Basic type

The data model for hackathon.json is based on the Hackathon type at Schema.org, which defines the properties and sub-entities involved in describing an event of this type.

The essentials of this is a header that includes a @context and @type reference, along with top-level properties such as name and startDate, as follows:

{
  "@context": "http://schema.org",
  "@type": "Hackathon",
  "name": "GLAMhack 2024",
  "startDate": "2024-09-06T09:00",
  "endDate": "2024-09-07T16:00",
  ...
}

Location

The geographic location of the event, if it has a physical address or geocoordinates, can be documented with the Location property, which may be formatted as a Place, PostalAddress, VirtualLocation, or just be a plain Text description.

Offers

Using the offers property, we can describe requirements of joining the hackathon, just as the obligation to buy a ticket or join a waiting list.

CreativeWork

The Schema.org type proposes the use of CreativeWork sub-entities to document the results of an event. This would include a @context, as well as name, dateCreated and so on. You can see this in the example below.

Full example

Retrieved from https://hack.glam.opendata.ch/hackathon.json on 2024-10-22:

{
  "@context": "http://schema.org",
  "@type": "Hackathon",
  "name": "GLAMhack 2024",
  "startDate": "2024-09-06T09:00",
  "endDate": "2024-09-07T16:00",
  "description": "10th Swiss Open Cultural Data Hackathon in Luzern",
  "mainEntityOfPage": "https://opendata.ch/de/events/glamhack24/",
  "url": "https://hack.glam.opendata.ch/event/12",
  "image": "https://s3.dribdat.cc/odch/a/1771/IBXKQB3UD3XW2PFOVONZNBX8/OpenGLAM_CH_Logo.svg.png",
  "location": {
    "@type": "Place",
    "address": "Lucerne",
    "name": "OpenGLAM CH"
  },
  "offers": {
    "@type": "Offer",
    "url": "https://opendata.ch/de/events/glamhack24/"
  },
  "workPerformed": [
    {
      "@type": "CreativeWork",
      "name": "DeepGLAM",
      "dateCreated": "2024-09-02T06:28",
      "dateModified": "2024-09-15T16:13",
      "description": "A \"meta\" challenge, in the form of a visualization that encourages participants to share some feedback/thoughts about this platform",
      "discussionUrl": "https://github.com/we-art-o-nauts/DeepGLAM/issues",
      "image": "https://s3.dribdat.cc/glam/c/1/JWWCD87JGB82LF0358POUQX8/Screenshot_from_20240906_220057.jpg",
      "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
      "url": "https://hack.glam.opendata.ch/project/300"
    },
    ...
  ]
}

Related standards

• civic.json
• eo-on-schema.org
• Frictionless Data
• Open Event Data
• Dublin Core™
• Dribdat API (see issue #112)

Tools

The following applications can generate a hackathon.json, visualize the format, or validate your schema:

• Schema Validator (Validator at Schema.org)
• Schemantra (Generator: fill out a form)
• Dribdat (Generator: a Python tool for hackathons)
• Backboard (Viewer: a JavaScript renderer, part of Dribdat)

License

CC0 1.0 Universal