First hackathon and development week in November?

Workspaces Software (Participio)
1

I’ve started working on getting the first Realities hackathon and focused development week off the ground. Seeing that the first use case for Realities is the Borderland, we’d like to have a version of it ready around January 2019. This means that we’d have to get started as soon as possible.

Currently, @erikfrisk is working on getting the basics ready. By the time he’s done, the Borderland will have an event on October 20th to test the current version and to define some feature requests, recommendations and use cases. After that, we’re ready to do a Particip.io hackathon to experiment and co-design, followed by a focused development week where 2-4 people will work full time on getting the next release of Realities ready and running.

Currently, my idea is to have a hackathon followed by a development week in the last two weeks of November.

Proposed dates, pending availability of developers, are:
Hackathon: November 16-18
Focused development: November 19-25

For the Hackathon, we need a mix of skilled developers and other people with great ideas and the willingness to learn and contribute. It will be open to up to 10 people, and accommodation, food and travel are payed for.

For the development week, only people who’ve already contributed to the code before the hackathon are eligible. Being on this team for the week following the hackathon means that accommodation for that week is payed for, and in addition to that there is 1000 EUR compensation for 7 days together (and also, I imagine, quite a bit of fun). Following a hackathon with a development week also allows people who’ve contributed to the hackathon to spend some time with us during the development weeks and, if they want to, put in some volunteer hours and contribute to the code to be eligible for future development weeks or freelance work.

Since we need experience with the codebase for the development week, that means that we’re probably limited to the eight developers who’ve currently contributed to the Realities repository on GitHub. This means that I need commitment from at least some of them to make these dates work, and I’ve reached out to them to post their availability status here. However, if someone else makes vetted contributions to the repository in the coming month, that person could be eligible too, but I’m not counting on that on such short notice.

Location of the hackathon and development week will depend a bit on the availability of key developers to travel, but if possible I’m pretty excited about the idea to maybe base it in Medenine, Tunisia. @haykel and @Yosser, still in early stages and can’t confirm anything right now, but what do you think about that?

3 Likes
2

Cool! I’ll most likely be in Bali so it might be impractical for me to travel to where you are, but I should be able to join for at least part of this remotely.

1 Like
3

Exciting! I’m very interested in joining the hackathon and development week (just need to confirm my availability).

1 Like
4

That would be fantastic @gustavlrsn! When do you think you might know if you’re available?

5

Those dates are fine for me. Sounds great!

1 Like
6

I can confirm that these dates work for me :slight_smile:

1 Like
7

I might be busy during the hackathon (Nov 16-18) but excited about the dev week (19-25). If we base it in Tunisia, how much would flight tickets cut out of the compensation? It sounds like an awesome place to hang out, never been, but just would like the numbers black on white :slight_smile:

1 Like
8

When needed/appropriate/budget-sensible for the project, I’m available to do some paid work. Right now I’m between consulting gigs but have two that are brewing, so could work on this while my new situation settles, but according to Hugi it’s not a good time to jump in at the moment. Grabbing a week or more in December might be a good fit for both me and the project though. We’ll see.

1 Like
9

No need to worry about that. We will cover flights and accommodations, in addition to the 1000 EUR.

10

Excellent, so that means that @questioneer, @gustavlrsn and @liam are confirmed, with @erikfrisk being available some of the time remotely. That’s good enough to decide that we’re doing this. Put that period down in your calendars, location to be announced.

We’ve got space for one or maybe two more people to join the development week. Get it while it’s hot.
I’ll get started on recruitment for the hackathon once we have a location confirmed.

1 Like
11

@Yosser, so this might be a good opportunity to do something in Medenine. What do you think?

12

I am 100% game on joining the hackathon and development week and contribute with design, testing, implementation and facilitation of various non-coding activities. Secondarily cooking if schedule permits.

Oh. I’m on Edgeryders! Why haven’t I been here before??

3 Likes
13

Welcome @Brooks! To make it clear, Brooks is a special case of a non-coder that joins us for the development week. He had the initial idea for Realities and has developed the concept with me. In addition to things mentioned above and being a key visionary for Realities, he will be offloading some project management from me and give me more time to focus on coding. There will also be tons of documentation, instructions, and concept notes for next steps to be written. Psyched to have him on board!

1 Like
14

Looking at travel time it looks like it might be a bit too much time in transit if we’d want to have a hackathon in Medenine before the development week, seeing that some people would just be joining for a long weekend. I’ll ask @Yosser about the details to see if it’s a feasible option. One possibility might be to have the Hackathon in Tunis, which is easy to fly to, and then have the development week in Medenine.

I’ll also be looking into some other options in parallel. A couple of options that come to mind are Lisboa and Barcelona. @liam is currently in Barcelona, and could perhaps point us in good directions there. I was in Lisboa with Nadia and Matteo earlier this year and really liked working from there - a very good vibe and still quite affordable. Both cities are easy and affordable to get to from pretty much anywhere.

15

Sounds great. I’m in for the Hackathon and would probably follow by a few days afterwards.
Can deliver coding skills and would start pushing some code before so I’ll have the environment set.

2 Likes
16

I just got off a call with @Yosser and it looks like Medenine might be a viable option after all, as there are direct and inexpensive flights from Paris to Djerba which is 30 minutes from Medenine. I’ll start a separate thread outlining why Medenine is a very interesting option, even though it might add a little bit of travel time.

17

@hugi thank you for sharing with us these details, Mathias, Yosser and I are also in Advanced reflecting phase around the possibility of organizing hackathon ideation camps and a solid training program in order to gather and develop the digital community in the city of Medenin , in which we count on the experience of Sohayeb in organizing ideation camps and hackathons beside a consultant specializing in designing hackathon challenges , If you are interested we can discuss more how it is possible to combine the projects and coordinate to optimize the costs and divide responsibilities and availaible resources to offer a unique experience for the participants like the one we already had during the social innovation camp which took place in medenine too
I share with you this video that was taken after the social innovation camp, also we want to work on decentralization and we already have a strong base in Medenine, so with the help of Yosser from there it will be well organized.

18

Welcome to @erikfrisk, @gustavlrsn. @liam, @questioneer, @brooks and @Forestblessing. I am Alberto, one of the old timers on Edgeryders. Like you, I have an interest in collective intelligence, and I have been arguing for an uneasy, but generative, alliance between ethnography and network science.

Looking forward to meeting you all and see where Particip.io takes us!

2 Likes