Monday Hackday at ESIP Summer Meeting. Theme: ‘Making Things Easier for Scientists’

What problem do you think needs solving?
event
nasa-framework
Authors

Openscapes

NASA Openscapes Mentors

Published

July 27, 2026

Cross-posted at openscapes.org/events, nasa-openscapes.github.io/news, nmfs-openscapes.github.io/blog

Please save the date and share your ideas now!

Monday, July 27th, the day before the ESIP meeting starts, we’ll host a hackday from 1 - 6 pm local time (ESIP Sched page). Plan to arrive in Austin to join us Monday afternoon.

“Hackday” to our NASA Openscapes and earthaccess communities means we will be collaboratively problem-solving and strategizing, and translating ideas into action. This includes decisions, code, and documentation.

Purpose: To gather anyone who’s interested and going to ESIP, and hack on “making things easier for scientists” from policy, social and technical perspectives. This in-person hackday is about how we’re supporting scientists with infrastructure. A lot of hacking is not hands-on coding. It’s hacking on decisions. It’s seeing how each other works. Asking each other questions about interoperability. It’s surfacing friction - which friction lies in the tech and which lies in the social? We know earthaccess has transformed the way people access NASA Earthdata. It’s technically possible to do this with data across agencies like NOAA, USGS. What would that look like? We want to identify what we can move forward after the hackday. What problem do you think needs solving?

At the hackday itself, we’ll kick things off with a friendly showcase to orient people:

  • How to use earthaccess with NASA data (Amy Steiker)

  • earthaccess with virtual datasets (data masquerading as cloud-native) (Luis Lopez) 

  • Point-collocation with remote-sensed plus buoy data - this is hard! (Eli Holmes)

Right now (before ESIP)

We want you to tell us: What problem do you think needs solving? Please share your ideas now in this Monday Hackday - Ideas Doc using the ‘your idea’ template. This is the one and only place to suggest, comment, ask questions, prior to the Monday hackday. Based on these asynchronous conversations, we’ll design collaborative breakouts for the hackday itself.

Your idea (template)

  • Your name
  • Project goal (big picture) and proximate goal (achieved by end of hackday), 
  • What’s in & out of scope. 
  • What skills & tool-familiarity are needed to contribute. 
  • Is it a clearly defined piece of work or something that will start with brainstorming?
  • Will it involve identifying use cases, documentation, or strictly coding?
  • Resources

This is a followup to our FUNding Friday event (thank you ESIP!). The space is generously provided by ESIP and coordinated by the Openscapes community.

5 people seated around a rectangular table with laptops open looking a a person standing pointing to a whiteboard

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Citation

BibTeX citation:
@online{2026,
  author = {, Openscapes and , Openscapes and Openscapes Mentors, NASA},
  title = {Monday {Hackday} at {ESIP} {Summer} {Meeting.} {Theme:}
    “{Making} {Things} {Easier} for {Scientists}”},
  date = {2026-07-27},
  url = {https://www.openscapes.org/events/2026-07-27-esip-hackday/},
  langid = {en}
}
For attribution, please cite this work as:
Openscapes, Openscapes, and NASA Openscapes Mentors. 2026. “Monday Hackday at ESIP Summer Meeting. Theme: ‘Making Things Easier for Scientists’.” July 27. https://www.openscapes.org/events/2026-07-27-esip-hackday/.