[Events] Draft for approval: Welcoming OpenHatch to organize the pre-Wikimania hackathon

[Asheesh Laroia]

Excerpts from Sumana Harihareswara's message of Sat Jun 16 15:13:18 -0400 2012:
> Asheesh, once you approve this, I'll send it to wikitech-l and the
> Wikimania public and planning lists. Thanks. -Sumana

Hi Sumana! Sorry about the delay in replying.

> OpenHatch is a non-profit dedicated to matching prospective free
> software contributors with communities, tools, and education.  Wikimedia
> Foundation is pleased to announce that we're partnering with OpenHatch
> to make the upcoming pre-Wikimania hackathon even more useful.
> 
> Asheesh Laroia and other OpenHatch folks will be working with Katie
> Filbert (Aude), Gregory Varnum (Varnent), and me to encourage and aid
> the Wikimedia technical community, by designing and executing the
> novice-focused half of the hackathon.  You'll see Asheesh in IRC as
> "paulproteus".
> 
> I'm excited that we're working with OpenHatch on this.  I've borrowed
> lessons from OpenHatch in structuring our events and educational
> materials.  They are leaders in teaching new contributors, and in
> building open source communities' capacity to nurture.  With OpenHatch's
> help with this event (and with the documentation they write), I hope to
> get scores of semitechnical Wikimedia editors over the barriers to
> technical contribution.
> 
> OpenHatch will, among other tasks:
> * Develop novice-focused curricula that include tutorials for novices
> * Design at least three project-based exercises for novices, based on
> the model OpenHatch created with its Python workshops

My preference would be:

s/Python/Python and open source workshops/

> * Review existing public reference and tutorial material on the topics
> * Update or write relevant instructional documentation on mediawiki.org,
> including writing high-quality setup instructions for a new developer's
> development environment
> * Find on-the-ground volunteers to help address problems that newcomers
> will face
> * Disseminate lessons learned to the Wikimedia community
> 
> You'll see Asheesh and his colleagues in #mediawiki, #wikimania,
> #openhatch, wikitech-l, Wikimania's lists, and the new
> Wikimedia/OpenHatch event list:
> http://lists.openhatch.org/mailman/listinfo/wmf-outreach-staff .  Welcome!

The rest sounds great. Thanks!

-- Asheesh.