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

[Greg Varnum]

Sumana and I are currently co-organizers - but I've been unexpectedly busy the past month with clients - so additional help would be fantastic.

I have lots of notes from past conversations and part way through some tasks.  Any chance we can catch up on IRC?

-greg


On 22 Jun, 2012, at 6:57 PM, James Hare <james.hare at wikidc.org> wrote:

> 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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