Taking the findings of the RA21 initiative to the next level, SeamlessAccess.org intends to support a streamlined federated authentication experience when using scholarly collaboration tools, information resources, and shared research infrastructure. The service will promote digital authentication leveraging an existing single-sign-on infrastructure through one’s home institution, while maintaining an environment that protects personal data and privacy. The service aims to enable simple, trusted use of scholarly resources and services anytime, anywhere, and on any device.

As part of our efforts to encourage organizations that support federated authentication, including publishers and platform providers, we are hosting a hackathon for developers. A hackathon is a hands-on developers meeting that offers individuals an opportunity to sit at a table with the architect or lead developer of a code base and get hands-on support in implementing the open-source software behind SeamlessAccess.org. A hackathon is not a tutorial, nor is it a presentation or conference session, and it is not suitable for non-developers.

Your organization is invited and encouraged to send members of your development team to the event to engage in understanding and developing code (bug fixes, feature enhancements, etc) against either the metadata query system and/or the code behind SeamlessAccess.org (thiss.io). This is a critical time in setting the direction of the service, and understanding how publishers and platform providers expect to integrate with the service is key.

There will be a second T&I Hackathon in the US on 10-11 December 2019, concurrent with the Internet2 Technology Exchange 2019 conference in New Orleans. The SeamlessAccess.org service will be at a different point in its development, and the questions and issues to be discussed are likely to be quite different at the second hackathon.

Participants in the hackathon will need to have the ability to access a test/dev environment for where they can install and test integrations with SeamlessAccess.org. We will provide the Internet connections, the power, and the platform source code.

Registration for the hackathon is part of the overall NORDUnet Technical Workshop. The NORDUnet Technical Workshop (NTW) is is held every two years in Copenhagen. The main event (24-26 September 2019) features a series of workshops on subjects related to research and education networks, including a full day of trust & identity workshops. The NTW brings together 150-200 practitioners from research and education networking communities in the Nordic countries and beyond. The event is held a 5-minute metro ride from Copenhagen airport, 10 minutes from central Copenhagen.