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Hackathons vs. retreats

ziggy on 2002-05-02T14:49:19

Here's an idea from the ruby-list: a hackathon as a vacation. I've been batting a similar idea around with Perl for a few weeks now. There's a chance I can get cheap classroom space in DC with (black|white)boards, desks and ethernet over the weekend during the day. I've been stuck on the idea of a "theme" to bring 20-30 people to DC.

Maybe I'm setting my sights too high? Perhaps all we need is 10 or so hackers who just want to come and visit, hang out and hack.

Surely, Washington DC isn't as majestic as Washington State's Olympic Peninsula. But it does have the advantage of being reasonably easy to reach for anyone on the East Coast. And there are plenty of restaurants around, at all price levels and dietary restrictions (except for breatharians).

YAPC-esque

gizmo_mathboy on 2002-05-02T15:00:59

Sounds like an interesting idea. Sort of a hands-on conference.

Instead of a theme maybe have folks submit project ideas beforehand. Then at the conference brainstorm for half a day on the submissions to get other ideas and/or flesh out the submissions.

Of course, knowing what the projects are might deter some people.

Also, does much coding go on at conferences? I've been to two TPC/OSCON's and I personally didn't do nor see much "project-level" coding. Then again I wouldn't call myself the most observant human on the face of the earth.

Re:YAPC-esque

ziggy on 2002-05-02T15:21:09

Instead of a theme maybe have folks submit project ideas beforehand. Then at the conference brainstorm for half a day on the submissions to get other ideas and/or flesh out the submissions.

Of course, knowing what the projects are might deter some people.

Some mechanism for soliciting themes/ideas/projects is the zeroth item on my list. The kind of event I want to put together isn't about a bunch of people being asocial together in a confined space, but about people being social and making progress on open source projects. So either the brainstorming is an integral part of the agenda or just something that's actively facilitated.

I'm not as worried that the choice of projects/theme will discourage some people from showing up. This kind of event should be cheap enough and easy enough to organize that it could be pulled off 12x/year at various locations around the globe.

Re:YAPC-esque

gizmo_mathboy on 2002-05-02T19:23:43

This kind of event should be cheap enough and easy enough to organize that it could be pulled off 12x/year at various locations around the globe.

I definitely concur that this is something that can occur more often than even YAPC. Maybe even something that can happen at the PM level?

Great idea in any case. I hope it comes to fruition.