Wikimedia Hackathon 2016/Lessons Learned

**this page is a work in progress**

This page is a combination of feedback from a survey sent to participants and ideas from the organizers.

This page will focus heavily on improvements for next time and things that went poorly. However remember that 100% of the participants that responded to the feedback survey stated that their overall experience with the hackathon was either "Positive" or "Very Positive."

Suggested changes for the next Wikimedia Hackathon

(Main suggestions for next time, more coming soon)

The best!:

The worst!:

Notes (delete)

1/2 of newcomers are not going to sessions for newcomers

most newcomers did not have a problem finding people to work with

Feedback survey background

 * rfarrand created the feedback survey using google forms based on feedback survey questions from past events.
 * The Feedback Survey was sent out to participants on April 4th, 2016
 * A reminder was sent to participants on April 24th, 2016
 * The Feedback Survey closed on May 11th, 2016
 * The survey received 82/118 responses (69.4% response rate)

Considerations for next year
This section is based on the fill-in-the-blank/comment sections of the feedback form. Some of these comments will be contradictory. We are mostly trying to include common themes and issues that were felt by groups of people. This section is a bit more subjective than the #Data section below and suggestions may be paraphrased and combined with each other.

Participant Info
How would you describe your experience as a developer? (81 responses) Including this event, how many Wikimedia hackathons have you attended? (82 responses)

Supporting Newcomers (these questions were only filled out by newcomers)
How useful did you find the sessions for newcomers? (41 responses)

How useful did you find the "Hackathon Newcomer" and "Long Term Wikimedian" buttons (42 responses)

How was it to find people to work with? (39 responses)

How useful were each of the following sessions?

Sessions / Schedule
How satisfied were you with the selection of sessions offered? (78 responses)

Logistics
How would you rate:

Ratings of the Hackathon Logistics

Accomplishments
What different tasks did you accomplish during your hackathon time? (80 responses)

Anything Else?
Please tell us how much you agree or disagree with the following statements. Are you interested in childcare next year (In Vienna)? (79 responses)