[WMF-outreach-staff] Notes from conversation with Sumana

[Asheesh Laroia]

Hey all,

Sumana had a chat this morning -- many thanks to her for making time -- 
and I wanted to share the minutes of it so we can all be on the same page.

This is somewhat free-form, so feel free to read for information. I'll 
send out separate emails for anything actionable.

Q. Do we want to do more outreach to bring more attendees to the 
hackathon?

A. Let's set the goal of the hackathon to be that current participants in 
Wikimedia projects, such as experienced Wikipedians, can be more involved 
in tech. Therefore, we don't need to do much outreach to get people in the 
DC area to come -- but we do want to do more advertising to Wikimania 
attendees that even if they're "not very technical", they can get a lot 
out of this.

Q. What can we offer to people who "aren't very technical", and how can we 
help them step up their game?

A. We can teach people how to program in Lua, because participating in 
template editing is building the technical infrastructure of a wiki, and 
those are moving to Lua in the coming year. We can teach people how to 
build and edit MediaWiki "Gadgets", which are JS they can embed into a 
wiki and share with others. Gadgets are in active use; the Lua stuff is in 
alpha testing, basically, and might get deployed on mediawiki.org in 6-12 
months, from what I can tell.

Q. What sort of attendance numbers are we aiming for?

A. A sad low number would be 30-40. Above that, anything is great. If it's 
more than 120 people, then we will be crazy overwhelmed.

General notes:

* The goal is to help people who have just edited be more in control of 
their technical experience when on Wikipedia, and hopefully to put them on 
a path toward sharing that experience with others in a way that builds up 
the project.

* We should send a confirmation email asking people reconfirm if they want 
to attend the Hackathon, about a week before the event.

* I currently hope to, with the blessing of other Wikimania organizers, 
send some emails to participants finding out the kind of thing they want 
to work on.

Other thoughts that come to mind as I write this out:

* If we had more time, I would rename the "Hackathon" to "Project night" 
or something else less intimidating. See also 
https://openhatch.org/blog/2012/the-steps-boston-ruby-is-taking-to-become-friendly-to-beginners/

-- Asheesh.