Hack The Pool
Cross-institutional cultural data hackathon
When: Thursday, 25. and Friday, 26. September 2025
Where: please note - new venue!
Federal Ministry Housing, Arts, Culture, Media and Sport (BMWKMS), Concordiaplatz 2 (ground floor), 1010 Vienna, Austria
OpenStreetMap | 48,2138343, 16,3696328
Registration: You can now register either as a group or individually via this link .
Organisation: Natural History Museum Vienna (NHM) & Kulturpool
Would you like to immerse yourself in the world of cultural data and discover hidden connections? Kulturpool cordially invites you to the ‘Hack the Pool’ hackathon, taking place on 25 and 26 September 2025 at the Praterateliers in Vienna. This two-day event will bring together creative minds and data enthusiasts to develop innovative projects related to our rich cultural heritage.
Registration
Registration for ‘Hack the Pool’ is now open! You can register either as a group or as an individual. If you have a specific project idea, please mention it when you register. However, even if you don’t have an idea yet, you are still welcome to join us – we can help you find a suitable team and an exciting challenge on the day.
Click here to registerWe look forward to welcoming you to Hack The Pool and shaping the future of cultural data together!
Event Details
What is “Hack the Pool”?
‘Hack the Pool’ is an inter-institutional cultural data hackathon organised by Kulturpool. The goal is to showcase the immense potential of cultural data by utilising Kulturpool’s new APIs. Drawing inspiration from other cultural heritage data hackathons, such as the Explore Salon and the Open Data Hackathon , we aim to foster a collaborative and inspiring environment where diverse skill sets can converge.
Who is the Hackathon intended for?
‘Hack The Pool’ is aimed at anyone who is enthusiastic about cultural data and willing to use their skills to create something new:
Developers with programming skills
Designers with an eye for aesthetics and user experience
Artists with creative visions and forms of expression
Data analysts with a flair for patterns and correlations
Researchers or students from the humanities or other disciplines
Or culture enthusiasts with an idea who want to make a difference!
We strongly encourage individuals and teams with different skills to apply. No prior knowledge of the Kulturpool APIs is required – we will provide a quick introduction and support.
The Quests: Directions for your projects
To give you some guidance and encourage the development of exciting projects, we have defined various ‘quests’ for your project. Be inspired and find your mission:
Enrichment: How can we enrich, supplement or link existing cultural data to make it even more valuable? Think about integrating geo-data, personal data or historical contexts.
Data Exploration: Develop innovative user interfaces or tools that enable a new, intuitive and playful exploration of cultural data. The aim is to promote serendipity and reveal hidden treasures.
Connecting the dots: Find unexpected connections and relationships between different data sets or cultural objects. Visualise these connections to generate new narrative storylines or research hypotheses.
Visualisations: Create engaging and informative visualisations that make complex cultural data accessible. From interactive maps to timelines to 3D models, let your creativity run wild to tell stories.
3D: Use 3D technologies to make cultural data spatially tangible. This could include the reconstruction of historical sites, the presentation of artworks in virtual environments, or the creation of immersive experiences.
Computer Vision: Apply computer vision techniques to recognise patterns in image and video data. This can include the automatic recognition of objects, people or styles in historical recordings, opening up new avenues for data analysis.
The Database: New Kulturpool APIs
The basis for your projects is provided by the brand-new APIs of the Kulturpool, which give you access to a wealth of cultural data:
Search-API: Enables efficient searching and querying of cultural data from various institutions.
OAI-PMH API: Provides a standardised way to harvest and integrate metadata from cultural institutions.
API for institutional data: Provides information about the participating cultural institutions themselves.
API for editorial content: Enables access to curated articles, stories and background information about cultural heritage.
In addition, tokens for external LLM models are available via OpenRouter to expand your projects with additional functions and possibilities.
Further Information
Slam / By volume: At the end of the hackathon, the teams present their results in a relaxed ‘slam’ format, which focuses on the creativity and impact of the projects.
To give you an idea of what can be achieved at cultural data hackathons, we recommend taking a look at successful examples such as Exploresalon 2023 or Coding Davinci .
