Talk:Hackathons

Page significantly edited as part of a project to improve hackathon documentation
I significantly edited this page as part of a project to improve the documentation for hackathon organizers.

If you're interested in details, find the official project description on Phabricator: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T168458

or check out my working page/ construction site that I used to document my work for this project: User:Sonkiki/Handbook Project

Sources I used to edit and create the content of this page:


 * content already existing on this page (as it was before my edits on June 30 2017), chapter "The Wikimedia Hackathon model"


 * content of the Hackathons/FAQ page, chapter "What is a hackathon?"


 * content of Wikimedia_Hackathon_2017 paragraph "What is a hackathon?"

I took from these sources and developed a new structure, in the form of "chapters" for this handbook.
 * new content I created by myself, drawn from experiences of organizing previous hackathons, especially the Wikimedia Hackathon 2017 Vienna

This was a team effort - thanks to everybody involved!

I had lots of help from the nice people at the WMF Technical Collaboration team, especially Rachel, Nick, Quim, BenoÎt, Chris and Whatamidoing, Melody from WMF Communications and my local team at WMAT, Claudia, Annemarie and Raimund.

I hope that the new structure created in this project not only proves to be helpful, but that it will be built upon, edited, improved and extended over time – like any good wiki page should be!

--Sonkiki (talk) 15:03, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Recommendations for future bids
We are aware of the fact that Hackathons only started to travel between countries a few years ago and the whole situation is fairly new for all stakeholders. Nevertheless, as a participant of this years bidding process, Wikimedia Österreich would like to share its perspective on and experiences with the current system, in order to improve the process for future applicants.

Criteria
We would recommend to make the criteria for decision making more clear and comprehensible. E.g. this year it was not clear that the location of next year’s Wikimania has a major influence on the decision. More transparency in this regard would prevent organizations from applying when they have little chance of winning the bidding process. Especially for small and lean organizations or groups putting together a bid is a considerable effort. Also, the relative weight of the various criteria is currently not entirely clear. Some aspects (for example cost and convenience of travel, sleep and work at the same venue) seemed to be more important in the Hackathon guidelines than they actually were in the decision making process.

Decision makers
The committee that decides on where the next hackathon in or around Europe takes place should be selected through a transparent process. The persons that sit on this committee don’t necessarily have to be selected in an application process. The format used this year where delegates from previous hackathon organisers took part is a good idea, but it should be clear a few months prior who will represent, so that they in turn can prepare accordingly. An additional benefit of choosing the committee would be the fact that they could also decide on how the various factors are weighted before chapters/organisations start their bids.

Timeline
We appreciate the idea that the whole process should be and stay as flexible as possible. However, the timing of the various steps of the bidding process should be a bit more clear, transparent and rigorous. We found it hard to plan and allocate our human ressources in the process, not knowing whether and and when there will be more questions, feedback and/or other requirements that need to be researched or prepared. Also, the communication with the other stakeholders (venue, caterer etc.) requires to work with concrete dates for reservations, options and the like.

Naming
For many years this event was known as the “European Hackathon”, on the proposal site it is called the “EU Hackathon” as well. We recommend changing the title to encompass more than just Europe so that other chapters close to Europe are also encouraged to bid for the hackathon and in order to reflect the new scope of the event.

--Claudia.Garad (talk) 15:53, 14 July 2015 (UTC) on behalf of WMAT

To merge
Hi, a couple of months ago I had started User:Jean-Frédéric/Hackathon handbook. Feel free to copy whatever is useful − I don’t think my subpage is useful now that this page is up :) Cheers, Jean-Fred (talk) 23:25, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Technical requirements
It would be worthwhile discussing in the article that user accounts are best created by users prior to attending the hackathon. Also that if there is the expectation that user accounts will be created during the hackathon that due to the default setting of limiting account creations from an IP address that the allocation of "account creator" rights to a trusted user would be useful for the span of the hackathon, and/or a phabricator ticket should be submitted to exempt the IP address of the hackathon from the account restriction throttle. — billinghurst  sDrewth  05:41, 12 April 2017 (UTC)