[Events] What is appealing about hack-day?

[Ned Batchelder]

One adjective I always use when describing the Boston project nights is 
"unstructured".  Some early attendees thought that everyone would be 
working on the same thing, like a sprint, which is definitely not what 
we are aiming for.

One feature of project nights that wasn't in the 1-7 list:  "Meet 
like-minded people."  When I look around our project nights, I see a lot 
of people just talking, even the ones who came with a specific coding 
project in mind.  Some of them are talking about their projects, but 
it's pretty clear that a lot of them are just talking, glad to have 
found someone with interest like their own.

--Ned.

On 1/4/2012 2:53 PM, Dana Bauer wrote:
> This is a really helpful conversation. We're having our first 
> PhillyPUG/PyStar Philly project night on January 26. I'm working on 
> the event page now and trying to figure out the language. Thanks!
>
> Dana
>
>
> On Wed, Jan 4, 2012 at 2:38 PM, Gregg Lind <gregg.lind at gmail.com 
> <mailto:gregg.lind at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     For the name, we are going with something more like "Coding Night",
>     rather than either "hack" or "project" night, which are not
>     descriptive enough, given the venue (Minneapolis HackFactory).
>     "Project" is a good word though.  The other comments are all quite
>     welcome though!
>
>     GL
>
>     On Wed, Jan 4, 2012 at 1:33 PM, Jessica McKellar
>     <jessica.mckellar at gmail.com <mailto:jessica.mckellar at gmail.com>>
>     wrote:
>     > Hi Gregg,
>     >
>     >
>     >> We are planning our first PyStar-MN hack night.
>     >
>     > Awesome!
>     >
>     >
>     >>   For someone coming
>     >> from the Workshop portion (new learner, possibly not sold on
>     the idea
>     >> of coding), what is appealing and unappealing about a Coding Night?
>     >> We are trying to design language that is both OPEN and INVITING and
>     >> not sure which things actually might appeal to such people.
>     >
>     > I think these options appeal most to workshop alums:
>     >
>     > 2. Work on your own projects or work through tutorials.
>     > 3. Start learning a new language or tool you've been meaning to
>     learn.
>     > 5. Ask questions and get help
>     >
>     > Here are some additional thoughts; hopefully they are helpful
>     and not
>     > straying too far from your question :) :
>     >
>     > We run project nights every month with the Boston Python user
>     group. It is
>     > for people of all experience levels, but we historically get a
>     lot of
>     > beginners. Some things that we've noticed:
>     >
>     > * people coming from the Boston Python Workshop with no prior
>     programming
>     > experience typically want to work through a Python tutorial some
>     more before
>     > jumping into projects
>     > * beginners value knowing that people from the workshop will be
>     there to
>     > help them
>     > * beginners often want someone to tell them what to work on.
>     Typically
>     > someone will say "what tutorial should I go through?" or "what
>     should I do
>     > now?" and we ask them a bit about their programming background
>     and then help
>     > them select material and get started based on that information.
>     > * beginners value knowing that other beginners will be there
>     with them
>     >
>     > An example project night event description is at:
>     > http://meetup.bostonpython.com/events/36662072/
>     >
>     > We polled some people when deciding on a name for this style of
>     event and
>     > decided that we liked "project night" the best; in particular
>     some people
>     > found "hack night" intimidating.
>     >
>     > Let me know if we can share anything else from Boston, and I
>     look forward to
>     > hearing about how the event turns out!
>     >
>     > -Jessica
>     >
>     >
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