Last year we ran the first ever Geothermal Hackathon. As with all things, we started small, but energetic: fourteen of us worked on six projects. Topics ranged from project management to geological mapping to natural language processing. It was a fun two days not thinking about coronavirus.

This year we’ll be meeting up on Thursday 13 and Friday 14 May, starting right after the Geoscience Virtual Event of the World Geothermal Congress. Everyone is invited — geoscientists, engineers, data nerds, programmers. No experience of geothermal is necessary, just creativity and curiosity.

Projects are already being discussed on the Software Underground; here are some of the ideas:

• Data-munging project for Utah Forge, especially well 58-32.

• Update the Awesome list Thomas Martin started last year.

• Implementing classic, or newly published, equations and algorthims from the literature.

I expect the preceeding WGC event will spark some last-minute projects too. But for the time being, you’re welcome to add or vote on ideas on the event page. What tools or visualizations would you find useful?

Build some digital geo skills

📣 If you’re looking to build up your coding skills before the hackathon — or for a research project or an idea at work — join us for a Python class. We teach the fundamentals of Python, NumPy and matplotlib using geological and geophysical examples and geo-familiar datasets. There are two classes coming up in May (Digital Geology) and June (Digital Geophysics).