[WMF-outreach-staff] Current state of Wikimania hackathon organizing (and stepping up as lead)

[James Hare]

On Fri, Jun 22, 2012 at 6:54 PM, Asheesh Laroia <asheesh at asheesh.org> wrote:
> I notice that on https://wikimania2012.wikimedia.org/wiki/Organizing_team
> there's no specific people dedicated to organizing the hackathon. I want to
> step up to be the lead organizer, but I don't want to step on anyone's toes.

By all means!

>
> From what I gather, looking at
> https://wikimania2012.wikimedia.org/wiki/Hackathon , no one has invited
> people to give specific tutorials yet, or created a concrete schedule.
> That's fine for a free-form hackathon.
>
> I'm interested in adding a lot more structure to things -- including finding
> and training volunteers to help make that work -- so that people who show up
> have a lot more clarity on what they can do that helps push the
> Wikimedia/MediaWiki tech world forward.

I will get you a list of room assignments that will be at your disposal.

>
> I'll be using this list as a discussion ground and idea growing point. Yes,
> that means if you have ideas, mention them here and we'll think + iterate
> together!
>
> Katie and Gregory in particular, I know you had some ideas about the
> hackathon. My first goal is to survey the people who have signed up to
> figure out what they want to learn, and also behind-the-scenes I'll do some
> research to see what things we can teach them (e.g. if they maintain
> extensions in svn and we can help them move to git), and then customize the
> hackathon to make sure it provides that.
>
> If we can organize things pretty soon, then there will be time to advertise
> the improved newcomer-friendly hackathon to other Wikimania attendees and
> try to convince them to show up on those first two days, too!
>
> So I'll be trying to "Be bold" in terms of updating pages like
> https://wikimania2012.wikimedia.org/wiki/Schedule/Hackathon , and I'm
> willing to put in a lot of work and time into making things great.
>
> I want to emphasize that I'm quite open to different ideas and adjustments!
>
> If that seems reasonable to y'all, I think the next step is for me to
> somehow get access to the list of names+emails who have signed up when
> registering for Wikimania. (Katie said on IRC a spreadsheet could probably
> be exported; that sounds fine for a start.) From my end, I'll be working on
> a survey to send to them to find out what they want to learn and hack on.
>
> -- Asheesh.
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