Enterprise MediaWiki hackathon

This page holds planning information for a possible "enterprise MediaWiki hackathon", as first discussed at SMWCon Fall 2013 in Berlin. The basic idea is that it will be a way for people (industry, academia and hackers) to work on "enterprise MediaWiki", i.e. non-Wikimedia Foundation, projects - which in practice probably means creating new extensions, modifying new extensions, working on skins, templates, forms and the like, and potentially working on documentation as well.

If you're interested in participating in such an event, feel free to add your opinions below, and add the " ~ " signature.

Dates and duration
''Ideas about the timing of this event - can be a year, season, month, or a specific set of dates. Should it be done before, after or alongside an existing event? Also, should it be held on a weekend or during the week? And how long should it last?''
 * We could either co-locate it with the OpenData Hackathon: http://opendataday.org or at least "steal" the idea: have several events at the same date in different locations around the world at once. We could team up via skype/google hangout and local groups can try to get something solved. Krabina (talk) 07:57, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Location
''Where should it be held? This could be a continent, country, city, or venue. Extra points if you're willing to nominate a location that could host the event for free.''
 * I'll be happy to host an event in Vienna, Austria. I have space for a max. of 20 persons. (My venue will be used on the above mentioned open data hackathon, though, so this will only be possible if we decide to go for a different date). Krabina (talk) 07:57, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Focus
''The word "hackathon" comprises a variety of different formats. Should the focus be on teaching/outreach, on coming up with cool new ideas (possibly via judges and prizes), on getting existing local software polished and released, or on something else?''
 * Focus should be on getting things done ("create camp"). E. g. solving tricky wiki tasks (templates, variables, parsing...), implementing a special prototype of something, coding and programming, translation/documentation, testing, etc. Krabina (talk) 07:57, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Other stuff
''Miscellaneous thoughts. Is there a better word than "hackathon" for this event? Can we get sponsors? (The need for sponsors probably depends in large part on (a) whether the venue is free, and (b) whether there are prizes.) Should the whole thing be done as a Google Hangout?''
 * We tend to use "Create Camp" rather than hackathon to avoide the negative connotation of the word hacking... Krabina (talk) 07:57, 4 November 2013 (UTC)