Application to Participate in the 1st iDigBio AOCR Hackathon

JavaScript isn't enabled in your browser, so this file can't be opened. Enable and reload.

We cordially invite you to participate in the first iDigBio Augmenting Optical Character Recognition Hackathon. Please tell us about yourself, your interests and availability to take part in this hackathon organized by the iDigBio Augmenting OCR working group and the Botanical Research Institute of Texas (BRIT), to be held February 13 - 14 (2013) in Fort Worth, Texas (USA). We are also excited to participate in the 2013 iSchools iConference in Fort Worth, Texas February 12 - 15th at the same time with a workshop http://www.ischools.org/iConference13/workshop11/ The iSchools community is encouraged to participate in our hackathon.

The overall goals of this hackathon are to compare and improve open source tools and techniques for capturing label data off of biological specimen labels in scientific collections. We will compare existing OCR software output against a standard set of images and evaluate the current natural language processing algorithms used for parsing OCR output into standard darwin core output. Before applying, please take some time to understand the project by reviewing the call for participation document at http://tinyurl.com/aocrHack

Integrated Digitized Biocollections (iDigBio) https://www.idigbio.org/ is seeking a diverse group of people to participate in a process that will generate code, docs, examples, tests, and demos. Applications are due asap in order to begin forming teams. The number of participants is limited to 20, so apply soon.

Your Name *

Affiliation(s) *

Email Address *

Availability *

Our hackathons use a team-based process with a beginning, middle and end. Effectiveness of the team depends on members being present.

If selected, I plan to attend all 2 days of the hackathon.

If selected, I plan to participate remotely for all 2 days of the hackathon

Other:

Open Source Licensing *

All code and documentation produced at the hackathon is to be made immediately available under an OSI-approved open source license or a Creative Commons license. Would this pose any difficulty for your participation?

I agree with open source licensing of all products

Other:

Do you have skills or knowledge in any of the following areas? *

running OCR Engines such as ABBYY, Tesseract, OCRopus or other

creation and maintainance of natural history authority files

evaluation of OCR and parsing performance

text parsing tools: you have experience manipulating strings, managing textual data/databases, and using natural language processing algorithms

mashups (semantic integration): you can write tools to discover, collect and integrate online data

web service interfaces: you can design and implement interfaces to wrap existing tools

provenance annotation: you can use metadata to keep track of where results came from

end-user tools: you know a workbench, viz, or other app that could be adapted for OCR, OCR output

workflows: you can assemble web services (or other resources) into an executable workflow

documentation: you can make screencasts and write clear how-to documents

something else: you can contribute to this project in ways we haven't imagined yet

Other:

Required

For any of the items you checked in the above question, please elaborate on your skills & knowledge, citing accomplishments. *

Rather than relying on 3rd-party recommendations, we prefer to assess the strength of an application based on your account of what prepares you for this event (e.g., code written, analyses performed, papers published). Please allow us a chance to see your skills and knowledge by citing outcomes that we can verify (e.g., via citation, URL). If you feel that your qualifications can be verified only by a third party such as a supervisor or mentor, please indicate this and provide contact information for the third party.

If you checked "something else", what expertise can you bring and how do you see yourself contributing to the project?

If possible, cite tangible accomplishments to provide evidence of your skills (see the note for the previous question).

Please list briefly, operating systems and programming languages with which you are comfortable. *

Hackathon ideas and personal goals *

You may have a personal goal for this hackathon, and you may have ideas for team projects that relate to the hackathon themes of (1) integration of OCR components, (2) supporting use-cases, and (3) doing shiny stuff. This is the place to tell your ideas and goals, given your current understanding of the project.

Do you have funds to support your participation? *

We have sufficient funds available to cover lodging for all participants; however, we probably will not have funds to cover travel and food for all participants. Travel costs vary depending on your location.

Yes, I can pay for travel, food and lodging

Yes, I can pay for travel and food

No, I do not have sufficient funding to pay for travel and food

Other:

Traveling from?

Where will you likely be traveling from? This information will be used with sponsored participants for budgeting purposes.

Other Comments

Please provide any other comments, suggestions, or feedback that are not covered by the questions above.

Submit

Clear form

Never submit passwords through Google Forms.

This form was created inside of University of Arizona.

Does this form look suspicious? Report

Forms