Despite the massive amount of biomedical literature, only a small amount is available in a form that is readily computable. The National Center for Biomedical Ontology (NCBO) is hosting the first hackathon to develop a comprehensive Network of BioThings (proteins, genes, pathways, mutations, drugs, diseases) extracted from scientific research articles and integrated with public biomedical data (see blog post http://goo.gl/i91ngK). During this hackathon, we will (1) identify motivating use cases, (2) define a shared, sustainable, multi-component infrastructure to build the NoB, and (3) implement common data representations, ontology-based programmatic interfaces, and develop cool applications. We will do this in an open, scalable, responsive manner so that it becomes a major asset for hackers and biomedical researchers worldwide.