Wikidata hackathon in London (all levels of experience welcome)

Wikidata is the intersection between wikis and big data. You can upload data about almost anything to Wikidata, and then use its search functions to query this data in any language.

Started in Germany in 2012, Wikidata now comprises over 42 million items, and with some basic coding knowledge, you can ask it questions like 'show me all the children of Genghiz Khan in a cluster tree', 'What are all the cities in the world with a female mayor'. and 'show me all the cats with photographs on Wikipedia'. 

Wikidata is an important tool for researchers, journalists, scientists and anyone else who wants to systematically study large quantities of data, and new data is being added to Wikidata all the time.

Come to a hackathon hosted by Wikimedia UK to find out how Wikidata works and how you can use it. Experienced Wikimedians will show you everything you need to know to start asking Wikidata questions which can help you research the subject areas you care about. If you are a more experienced coder or Wikidata user, we will have an advanced stream with developers there to show you more complex things you can do with Wikidata, and tools you can use to make the most of its vast possibilities.

Training will include:

 - Introduction to Wikidata - editing Wikidata items

 - Using SPARQL to write queries and search the data

 - A-Z of useful tools (Visualisation and upload/data management)