From andy at petdance.com Thu Aug 10 14:32:48 2006 From: andy at petdance.com (Andy Lester) Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2006 16:32:48 -0500 Subject: [Hackathons] Proposal for Chicago Hackathon Nov 10-12 Message-ID: <20060810213248.GA16897@petdance.com> =head1 PROPOSAL Hackathon near Chicago =head1 DATES Friday, November 10 - Sunday, November 12, 2006 =head1 LOCATION Country Inn and Suites, 600 Tracy Trail, Crystal Lake, IL Phone: (815) 477-3500 =head1 IDEA AND RATIONALE Following YAPC::NA 2006, a group of Perl hackers got together in the student union building on the campus of IIT and had an impromptu hackathon for three days. Food was provided by Jesse Vincent and CL Kao of Best Practical, and people were working together on several diverse ideas. A lot of good things came out, including: =over 4 =item * much Perl 6, pugs and Parrot work, =item * the Parrot Cage Cleaners effort, =item * the TAP namespace and test refactoring, =item * work on several large projects, such as Moose and PITA, and =item * a new version of Vanilla and Strawberry Perl. =back The energy of having people in the same place on the same projects turned out great productivity in a way that collaborating over email or IRC just can't. We propose the first standalone hackathon on the second weekend of November, near Chicago. We expect it to be a regional event, although all are welcome. Some may fly in, but we expect most will drive. Our hope is that there will be regional standalone hackathons, around the US and the world, roughly quarterly. =head1 VENUE We have looked at several venues, considering several factors, including: =over 4 =item * Overall cost to attendees, =item * access to public transportation, =item * proximity to stores, restaurants, and (most importantly!) a 24-hour minimart, =item * centrality of location. =back Having the hackathon near Chicago places a lot of people within a day's drive of Chicago, including hackers from Madison, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, and other Midwestern cities. Crystal Lake is also an hour's drive from Chicago, Milwaukee and Rockford, and 90 minutes from Madison, in an excellent central location. This specific hotel is located 2 blocks from the Metra Rail line, so Chicago folks can take the train out from the Loop, and it's also serviced by Van Galder Bus Lines, which goes from O'Hare for $16. We chose the suburbs of Chicago for the venue mostly on a cost basis: rooms in downtown Chicago, or near the airport, were two to three times as expensive, and the meeting room cost was even worse. The venue we chose offered us sleeping rooms at a 20% discount without a minimum commitment, and offered up meeting space for all of Friday and Saturday, and most of Sunday. In addition, we are free to use their Internet and bring in food from outside (something that was a concern with other locations). There is also another hotel across the street from this one, which gives us some overflow capacity if the first hotel fills up unexpectedly. =head1 WHY THOSE DATES? Saturday, November 11, 2006 is Veteran's Day in the US. Some people, including federal employees and those in school, have that Friday off. We hope this will encourage additional participation by those who have a 3-day weekend. This weekend is the latest weekend that the hackathon can be done before the US holiday schedule starts playing havoc with everyone's availability, as Thanksgiving is 11 days after the end of the hackathon, and Christmas is a month later. The earliest date we considered was in October due to the Pittsburgh Perl Workshop on September 23rd. However, by holding the hackathon in November, we give people an additional month to make plans to attend, and we run a lower risk of "workshop fatigue". =head1 TOPIC AND GUEST This initial hackathon will be geared towards Parrot, but not exclusively so. We invite people to come work together on any Perl-related project they have interest in. We have talked with Chip Salzenberg, Parrot pumpking, who has tentatively agreed to fly out from the San Francisco area to participate. We would like to cover his travel and lodging expenses with the grant, and use his presence as a draw for other people. =head1 COSTS (NOTE: A full breakdown of estimated costs is at the end) Based on our conversation with the sales manager at the hotel, we can get a meeting room that will hold about 30 people comfortably all day Friday and Saturday, and Sunday except 9a-1p, for $200. We will also have a lounge area outside of breakfast times, and there are some tables and chairs near the pool area. Sleeping room costs are normally $99 per night; we were able to get a $20 per night discount from the hotel, with no minimum booking needed. We propose that TPF pick up 20% of the remaining room cost, to make the price even more attractive to people and encourage them to stay. Two people sharing a double room would each then pay $31.50 per night (plus taxes), which should be affordable to almost everyone. We want to encourage people to stay together and work together - and part of doing that is supplying them with food. Besides snacks, we would like to provide a dinner on Friday and Saturday and a lunch on Sunday. =head2 FIXED COSTS =over 4 =item * Guest airfare: $415 =item * Guest room: $79 * 3 = $237 =item * Meeting room: $200 =back Total fixed costs for the event: $852 =head2 INCREMENTAL COSTS In addition to the space and guest costs, we would expect to pay for some meals and snacks for people participating in the hackathon. By our rough, preliminary estimates, we would expect to pay $300 in cost sharing for rooms, and $850 in food (snacks and dinners), for an incremental cost of $1150. =head2 TOTAL COST We are looking at an approximate budget of $2,000. $850 of that would be spent, no matter the turnout. The incremental costs will be the hardest to judge until we have more experience with expected turnouts, but we've taken our best guesses at the potential turnout and costs. =head1 ATTENDANCE Based on discussions with various individuals, we should have sufficient interest to warrant the costs to TPF. We have interest from hackers in Chicago, DeKalb, Madison and St. Louis, without significant publicity. The numbers we have here are based in part on the turnout at the YAPC::NA hackathon, and in part on what our estimates of local interest are. Since this is the first time this has been done in the US, we are making a lot of assumptions, and the lessons we learn from this event will help shape future hackathons here. We would also encourage local hackers to bring their families, if they want or need to. There are other things to do in the area, such as a movie theater across the street and several shopping areas within a few miles. Chicago is also a train ride away, with all its tourist activities. One adult and up to three children can ride the train for $5 all weekend to and from Chicago. One open question is whether we need to cap the numbers of people and whether we need to announce that number. We certainly will need a better idea of the total headcount as we get close to the hackathon itself, to plan for snacks and dinners. =head1 AUTHORS Andy Lester C<< >>, Pete Krawczyk C<< >> COSTS Headcounts Stay Thu 5 Work Fri 15 Stay Fri 7 Work Sat 20 Stay Sat 7 Work Sun 15 Total roomnights 19 Total workerdays 50 Room/nite $79 Room costs $1,501 TPF pays 20% User/night $63 Space Sleeping $300 Meeting room $200 Celeb Fly celeb $415 Celeb hotel $237 Food per head Snacks $250 $5 Pizza Fri $210 $14 Chinese Sat $200 $10 Pizza Sun $210 $14 Totals Space $500 25% of total Celeb $652 32% of total Food $870 43% of total Total $2,022 -- Andy Lester => andy at petdance.com => www.petdance.com => AIM:petdance From andy at petdance.com Thu Aug 10 17:29:11 2006 From: andy at petdance.com (Andy Lester) Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2006 19:29:11 -0500 Subject: [Hackathons] The Hackathon Proposal Message-ID: <0A84A856-01EC-423A-946E-D45DA622C4A2@petdance.com> So what do Pete & I need to do to move forward with getting this going from TPF? xoxo, Andy -- Andy Lester => andy at petdance.com => www.petdance.com => AIM:petdance From cbrandt at buffalo.edu Tue Aug 15 05:03:47 2006 From: cbrandt at buffalo.edu (Jim Brandt) Date: Tue, 15 Aug 2006 08:03:47 -0400 Subject: [Hackathons] The Hackathon Proposal In-Reply-To: <0A84A856-01EC-423A-946E-D45DA622C4A2@petdance.com> References: <0A84A856-01EC-423A-946E-D45DA622C4A2@petdance.com> Message-ID: <44E1B823.3020809@buffalo.edu> Andy, The proposal looks great to me. I don't know how we go forward, but if it's a vote, I vote yes. It seems to me this is a great way to effectively spend TPF money to support Perl. Some comments below. * Well thought-out; * Good balance of attendee pay-out and TPF help such that everyone is committed; * Just the thing to facilitate work on a project without getting into the business of paying for specific features. Some questions: * You don't mention power, networking, wireless access or other possible needs. Is there anything TPF or the organizers would need to provide from this perspective? Would all attendees have access to the hotel's wireless network? * It would be nice to include a statement that the organizers will provide an update daily(?) and a final summary of the major milestones achieved. It might be tough to put them up front, but after the fact we should note what was done. * You are PR-man, so I assume you'll take care of publicizing the event. Capping it might be a good idea, or maybe setting a sign-up date? However, herding cats is difficult and these things are often tough to stick with. * As you mention, this is a bit of a prototype for possible future events, so it would be good to keep track of what goes right and what goes wrong so we can pass a template to the next group. This would include what you were able to negotiate with the host hotel. Jim Andy Lester wrote: > So what do Pete & I need to do to move forward with getting this > going from TPF? > > xoxo, > Andy > > -- > Andy Lester => andy at petdance.com => www.petdance.com => AIM:petdance > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Hackathons mailing list > Hackathons at pm.org > http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/hackathons -- Jim Brandt Conferences Chair The Perl Foundation email: cbrandt at perlfoundation.org IM: cbrandtbuffalo at mac.com perlmonks: cbrandtbuffalo From andy at petdance.com Tue Aug 15 09:14:17 2006 From: andy at petdance.com (Andy Lester) Date: Tue, 15 Aug 2006 09:14:17 -0700 Subject: [Hackathons] The Hackathon Proposal In-Reply-To: <44E1B823.3020809@buffalo.edu> References: <0A84A856-01EC-423A-946E-D45DA622C4A2@petdance.com> <44E1B823.3020809@buffalo.edu> Message-ID: <982E103E-8E2E-462B-A151-8ACD877118AF@petdance.com> > > The proposal looks great to me. I don't know how we go forward, but > if it's a vote, I vote yes. It seems to me this is a great way to > effectively spend TPF money to support Perl. Some comments below. Thanks for the kind words, Jim. I have to point out that the proposal is so good because Pete Krawczyk wrote it. He's on the list and my co-conspirator on this. I will respond to bullets later. Thanks, xoxo, Andy -- Andy Lester => andy at petdance.com => www.petdance.com => AIM:petdance From andy at petdance.com Fri Aug 18 14:04:45 2006 From: andy at petdance.com (Andy Lester) Date: Fri, 18 Aug 2006 16:04:45 -0500 Subject: [Hackathons] The Hackathon Proposal In-Reply-To: <44E1B823.3020809@buffalo.edu> References: <0A84A856-01EC-423A-946E-D45DA622C4A2@petdance.com> <44E1B823.3020809@buffalo.edu> Message-ID: <5D5431F3-C43C-4F65-B22B-46A413F4D568@petdance.com> > * You don't mention power, networking, wireless access or other > possible needs. Is there anything TPF or the organizers would need > to provide from this perspective? Would all attendees have access > to the hotel's wireless network? Yes, they have wireless. We would want to make sure that we had a backup plan, such as having our own access point and access to their router. > * It would be nice to include a statement that the organizers will > provide an update daily(?) and a final summary of the major > milestones achieved. It might be tough to put them up front, but > after the fact we should note what was done. Yes, I agree 100%. I'd like to have a wiki set up before that lets people post about the projects they want to work on. Not everyone will have a project in mind, and will just come to hang out, and that's to be encouraged as well. > * You are PR-man, so I assume you'll take care of publicizing the > event. Capping it might be a good idea, or maybe setting a sign-up > date? However, herding cats is difficult and these things are often > tough to stick with. Yeah, we'll have to cap it, but I doubt that will be a problem. > * As you mention, this is a bit of a prototype for possible future > events, so it would be good to keep track of what goes right and > what goes wrong so we can pass a template to the next group. This > would include what you were able to negotiate with the host hotel. Absolutely. -- Andy Lester => andy at petdance.com => www.petdance.com => AIM:petdance From wnodom at tmtowtdi.com Sun Aug 20 20:57:11 2006 From: wnodom at tmtowtdi.com (Bill Odom) Date: Sun, 20 Aug 2006 22:57:11 -0500 Subject: [Hackathons] The Hackathon Proposal In-Reply-To: <0A84A856-01EC-423A-946E-D45DA622C4A2@petdance.com> References: <0A84A856-01EC-423A-946E-D45DA622C4A2@petdance.com> Message-ID: <44E92F17.1040406@tmtowtdi.com> Andy: I know we've already spoken about this, but I wanted to move a couple of items onto the list, just for the sake of completeness. First, like Jim, I'm all for this idea (which is probably no surprise, seeing as how we were both at the same YAPC::NA meeting when it came up). Second, there was a quick conversation (among Richard, Kurt, and myself) about how TPF is allowed to spend money, and whether or not this is something we can do. The short version: Yes, this looks perfectly legit. So... hooray for that. :) I know that Richard, Kurt, Jim, and I are on-board with the idea. I think Curtis is the only one that hasn't spoken up yet, so I'd be curious to get any thoughts he has about it. Thanks, Bill P.S. - Is Kurt on this list? If not, he should be, seeing as how he's the guy that writes the checks. From andy at petdance.com Sun Aug 20 20:59:04 2006 From: andy at petdance.com (Andy Lester) Date: Sun, 20 Aug 2006 22:59:04 -0500 Subject: [Hackathons] The Hackathon Proposal In-Reply-To: <44E92F17.1040406@tmtowtdi.com> References: <0A84A856-01EC-423A-946E-D45DA622C4A2@petdance.com> <44E92F17.1040406@tmtowtdi.com> Message-ID: <478FF49C-E0E2-4065-881B-F7DA2EAA68DF@petdance.com> On Aug 20, 2006, at 10:57 PM, Bill Odom wrote: > P.S. - Is Kurt on this list? If not, he should be, seeing as how he's > the guy that writes the checks. I didn't ask him to, so no. What email? -- Andy Lester => andy at petdance.com => www.petdance.com => AIM:petdance From publiustemp-hackathon at yahoo.com Mon Aug 21 01:28:56 2006 From: publiustemp-hackathon at yahoo.com (Ovid) Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2006 01:28:56 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Hackathons] The Hackathon Proposal In-Reply-To: <44E92F17.1040406@tmtowtdi.com> Message-ID: <20060821082856.43433.qmail@web60812.mail.yahoo.com> ----- Original Message ---- From: Bill Odom > I know that Richard, Kurt, Jim, and I are on-board with the idea. I > think Curtis is the only one that hasn't spoken up yet, so I'd be > curious to get any thoughts he has about it. Richard also asked me about this recently. My apologies for not getting on with it. The $2,000 cost seems like a bargain. That's frequently the amount spent on a single grant and yet the hackathon offers two huge advantages: 1. Grantees don't always deliver on what they promise (part of the impetus for not paying them all the money up front) 2. We only pay for grants which people have applied for. The latter point sounds silly, but it reinforces that the grant process is very hit or miss. We've had two grants approved this quarter and I'll be announcing them shortly, but while both grants are good, the ultimate long-term value of them is a bit of a crapshoot. With hackathons, we get to *choose* what we're spending money on and there's a better chance of positive results. Thus, I'm quite in favor of them if we can afford them. And Andy, the email address for Kurt is: Kurtis DeMaagd , Cheers, Ovid -- Buy the book -- http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/perlhks/ Perl and CGI -- http://users.easystreet.com/ovid/cgi_course/ From richard.dice at gmail.com Mon Aug 21 04:39:43 2006 From: richard.dice at gmail.com (Richard Dice) Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2006 07:39:43 -0400 Subject: [Hackathons] The Hackathon Proposal In-Reply-To: <20060821082856.43433.qmail@web60812.mail.yahoo.com> References: <44E92F17.1040406@tmtowtdi.com> <20060821082856.43433.qmail@web60812.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <5bef4baf0608210439y472f4437q23d1ee80172dd5f2@mail.gmail.com> > > I know that Richard, Kurt, Jim, and I are on-board with the idea. I > > think Curtis is the only one that hasn't spoken up yet, so I'd be > > curious to get any thoughts he has about it. ... Thus, I'm quite in favor of them if we can afford them. >From what I count here, this is ("yes") x 5. Just to be explicit about things: Andy, go forth with your hackathon! So, my question is: what's the first step of implementation? There are certain things TPF should be involved with and we need to figure out what these are and how to handle them, while letting Andy & Pete do the stuff they can do on their own without getting in their way. Cheers, Richard -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.pm.org/pipermail/hackathons/attachments/20060821/2a06d538/attachment.html From richard.dice at gmail.com Mon Aug 21 05:32:14 2006 From: richard.dice at gmail.com (Richard Dice) Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2006 08:32:14 -0400 Subject: [Hackathons] The Hackathon Proposal In-Reply-To: <44E9A71F.2000702@buffalo.edu> References: <44E92F17.1040406@tmtowtdi.com> <20060821082856.43433.qmail@web60812.mail.yahoo.com> <5bef4baf0608210439y472f4437q23d1ee80172dd5f2@mail.gmail.com> <44E9A71F.2000702@buffalo.edu> Message-ID: <5bef4baf0608210532p3241f746of36e17458f2541f0@mail.gmail.com> > And, as much as possible, let's try to keep the stuff TPF has to do to a > minimum. Agreed. Whose job is it to come up with what TPF needs to do? Talking with Bill about this around 2 weeks ago the thing that came to mind was just wanting a chance to review the advertising copy. Andy, if you have an implementation plan then post it here. If it looks like there's a step that TPF needs a hook into me / Bill will say something. Otherwise we won't. :-) I hope that qualifies as minimal TPF process intrusion. Cheers, Richard -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.pm.org/pipermail/hackathons/attachments/20060821/a690f72d/attachment.html From cbrandt at buffalo.edu Mon Aug 21 05:29:19 2006 From: cbrandt at buffalo.edu (Jim Brandt) Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2006 08:29:19 -0400 Subject: [Hackathons] The Hackathon Proposal In-Reply-To: <5bef4baf0608210439y472f4437q23d1ee80172dd5f2@mail.gmail.com> References: <44E92F17.1040406@tmtowtdi.com> <20060821082856.43433.qmail@web60812.mail.yahoo.com> <5bef4baf0608210439y472f4437q23d1ee80172dd5f2@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <44E9A71F.2000702@buffalo.edu> Richard Dice wrote: > > So, my question is: what's the first step of implementation? There are > certain things TPF should be involved with and we need to figure out > what these are and how to handle them, while letting Andy & Pete do the > stuff they can do on their own without getting in their way. > And, as much as possible, let's try to keep the stuff TPF has to do to a minimum. It's much better to delegate as much as possible to the organizers since they have a driving interest in getting things done. I wouldn't want something to be held up based on an artificial TPF step in the process. Whose job is it to come up with what TPF needs to do? -- Jim Brandt Conferences Chair The Perl Foundation email: cbrandt at perlfoundation.org IM: cbrandtbuffalo at mac.com perlmonks: cbrandtbuffalo From andy at petdance.com Mon Aug 21 09:03:59 2006 From: andy at petdance.com (Andy Lester) Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2006 11:03:59 -0500 Subject: [Hackathons] The Hackathon Proposal In-Reply-To: <20060821082856.43433.qmail@web60812.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20060821082856.43433.qmail@web60812.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <8B403EF1-C34C-435B-A02A-F3AA8CC2ED3B@petdance.com> On Aug 21, 2006, at 3:28 AM, Ovid wrote: > With hackathons, we get to *choose* what we're spending money on > and there's a better chance of positive results. Thus, I'm quite in > favor of them if we can afford them. I want to clarify something here. You said "We get to choose what we're spending money on," but that's not exactly the case. The hackathon doesn't have any set projects or goals. Yes, we'll want to bring someone out related to Perl 6 or Parrot (I have Chip waiting in the wings for this time around) but people who come out can work on whatever they want. I suspect that for the locals who come, they might not have any idea about P6 and want to work on their own projects. For that matter, we may have people who come and watch MST3K all day and suck up our free pizza. I suspect that won't be common, but it's a non-zero chance. > And Andy, the email address for Kurt is: Kurtis DeMaagd > , OK, I signed up Kurt. -- Andy Lester => andy at petdance.com => www.petdance.com => AIM:petdance From andy at petdance.com Mon Aug 21 09:05:51 2006 From: andy at petdance.com (Andy Lester) Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2006 11:05:51 -0500 Subject: [Hackathons] The Hackathon Proposal In-Reply-To: <5bef4baf0608210532p3241f746of36e17458f2541f0@mail.gmail.com> References: <44E92F17.1040406@tmtowtdi.com> <20060821082856.43433.qmail@web60812.mail.yahoo.com> <5bef4baf0608210439y472f4437q23d1ee80172dd5f2@mail.gmail.com> <44E9A71F.2000702@buffalo.edu> <5bef4baf0608210532p3241f746of36e17458f2541f0@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <17BAD3C7-6DDF-49EA-B354-CA1227F9B38A@petdance.com> On Aug 21, 2006, at 7:32 AM, Richard Dice wrote: > Andy, if you have an implementation plan then post it here. If it > looks like there's a step that TPF needs a hook into me / Bill will > say something. Otherwise we won't. :-) I hope that qualifies as > minimal TPF process intrusion. I will do so. Pete and I will get together later this week. -- Andy Lester => andy at petdance.com => www.petdance.com => AIM:petdance From publiustemp-hackathon at yahoo.com Mon Aug 21 09:33:28 2006 From: publiustemp-hackathon at yahoo.com (Ovid) Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2006 09:33:28 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Hackathons] The Hackathon Proposal In-Reply-To: <8B403EF1-C34C-435B-A02A-F3AA8CC2ED3B@petdance.com> Message-ID: <20060821163328.9114.qmail@web60818.mail.yahoo.com> ----- Original Message ---- From: Andy Lester > You said "We get to choose what we're spending money on," but that's > not exactly the case. The hackathon doesn't have any set projects or > goals. Yes, we'll want to bring someone out related to Perl 6 or > Parrot (I have Chip waiting in the wings for this time around) but > people who come out can work on whatever they want. I suspect that > for the locals who come, they might not have any idea about P6 and > want to work on their own projects. For that matter, we may have > people who come and watch MST3K all day and suck up our free pizza. > I suspect that won't be common, but it's a non-zero chance. Hmm, this gives me a bit of pause since I misunderstood. We're talking about spending over two grand on a possibility that hacking on worthwhile projects may occur? If the goal of the hackathons is not "get together several programmers to hack out important stuff that we need and have fun while doing it", then what is the goal? I'm reading http://mail.pm.org/pipermail/hackathons/2006-August/000000.html more closely and I see now that I did, in fact, misunderstand. I'm not saying that I object to the hackathon, but I really have no idea how much money we regularly have to spend on stuff and if the purpose of a hackathon isn't focused, I feel much less comfortable about it. Convince me :) Cheers, Ovid From richard.dice at gmail.com Mon Aug 21 10:29:11 2006 From: richard.dice at gmail.com (Richard Dice) Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2006 13:29:11 -0400 Subject: [Hackathons] The Hackathon Proposal In-Reply-To: <20060821163328.9114.qmail@web60818.mail.yahoo.com> References: <8B403EF1-C34C-435B-A02A-F3AA8CC2ED3B@petdance.com> <20060821163328.9114.qmail@web60818.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <5bef4baf0608211029s332ea4fdg68e5e5ca28e282a2@mail.gmail.com> > Hmm, this gives me a bit of pause since I misunderstood. We're talking > about spending over two grand on a possibility that hacking on worthwhile > projects may occur? If the goal of the hackathons is not "get together > several programmers to hack out important stuff that we need and have fun > while doing it", then what is the goal? I think that is the goal, but we're not setting the agenda beforehand of what the important stuff is. As we've discussed many times before, TPF is not responsible for Perl 6, but we offer assistance to the Perl 6 effort. I trust Chip to create an agenda for what work he hopes is accomplished at the hackathon better than I trust... well, at least myself. :-) So maybe this just means that we need to make sure that Chip does appropriate planning beforehand that he can communicate to us and that we then can communicate to potential attendees. I'm reading http://mail.pm.org/pipermail/hackathons/2006-August/000000.htmlmore closely and I see now that I did, in fact, misunderstand. I'm not > saying that I object to the hackathon, but I really have no idea how much > money we regularly have to spend on stuff and if the purpose of a hackathon > isn't focused, I feel much less comfortable about it. We haven't committed to the regular spending of money. This is a pilot project. Once it happens we can gauge if we think it's worthwhile to do it again once, let alone multiple times. But more fundamentally, I suggest we don't worry about the money too much. Kurt is around to write the cheques and make sure that we don't risk too much on any given thing. While TPF isn't exactly rich, $2k is small compared even to what we have in the bank. (And if it turns out that it's a real wash-out and few people attend then it'll be more like $1k. Recall that the fixed costs are only $850-ish.) >From the perspective of this project, our challenge isn't the money. It's about doing a good project. Frankly, for the minimal money risk involved I'm much happier spending the money on the theory that Andy, Chip and Pete working together can generate good things than I am withholding the money on the theory that they might fuck it up. If it is a success, I predict that Bill and / or I will find a corporate sponsor who will pay for future hackathons. Our difficulty in fund-raising isn't "everyone hates Perl." It's "TPF needs to get organized enough to a) go through with fund-raising efforts in the first place, and b) organize ourselves well enough to be able to properly administer the money and administer the projects the money would fund." Convince me :) For a speculative project like this there's no way to prove that success will happen. For a collection of volunteers operating in a just-in-time fashion I don't think it's realistic to expect a detailed business case either. (You know, the 100 page variety filled with spreadsheets and linear regression projections.) Fortunately, I don't think "proof" is the standard of decision making involved. Are hackathons in general worthwhile? Dunno -- I have no "proof" of this either. But ask Jesse. Ask Chip. Ask Patrick. Did the one following YAPC::NA 2006 produce good things in their estimation? Ask Patrick, ask Steve, ask Larry -- did the one preceding YAPC::NA 2005 turn out good results? Might this one produce good results? Dunno. No one will until we try. Ask Andy, ask Pete, ask Chip if they intend to make it a good one. These are guys with a pretty good track record so far so I'm inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt right now. Does it matter if TPF spends $1000 and it turns out not to work all that well? I can answer that one -- no, or at least it doesn't matter financially. Will we "be criticized" for it? There are always cranks who will criticize, so perhaps they will again. And I will let myself care as much as I do now. As for the criticism of non-cranks, I'd like to think they'd actually be happy that we *tried* to do something. Failure can *always* be avoided... by doing nothing. Does it matter if TPF spends $2000 and it turns out to work out great? I can answer that one -- yes, it matters. In a very positive way. This can be a real flag for us to wave in the future. Cheers, Richard -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.pm.org/pipermail/hackathons/attachments/20060821/39f16d79/attachment-0001.html From andy at petdance.com Mon Aug 21 21:08:31 2006 From: andy at petdance.com (Andy Lester) Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2006 23:08:31 -0500 Subject: [Hackathons] The Hackathon Proposal In-Reply-To: <5bef4baf0608211029s332ea4fdg68e5e5ca28e282a2@mail.gmail.com> References: <8B403EF1-C34C-435B-A02A-F3AA8CC2ED3B@petdance.com> <20060821163328.9114.qmail@web60818.mail.yahoo.com> <5bef4baf0608211029s332ea4fdg68e5e5ca28e282a2@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <1ACF2B2B-672E-4D59-BD34-D0D611D0F6D9@petdance.com> On Aug 21, 2006, at 12:29 PM, Richard Dice wrote: > > Hmm, this gives me a bit of pause since I misunderstood. We're > talking about spending over two grand on a possibility that hacking > on worthwhile projects may occur? If the goal of the hackathons is > not "get together several programmers to hack out important stuff > that we need and have fun while doing it", then what is the goal? That IS the goal, but that doesn't mean it'll happen, or that we're going to enforce it. "Hey you, write some code or no pizza!" > So maybe this just means that we need to make sure that Chip does > appropriate planning beforehand that he can communicate to us and > that we then can communicate to potential attendees. Right, and that's my plan. Chip is now on this list, and I've asked him for a list/roadmap of what we'll do. It's more for the benefit of people who are coming in to do it! It'll also be ideal for Parrot Cage Cleaning, and I can write that up. > $2k is small compared even to what we have in the bank. (And if it > turns out that it's a real wash-out and few people attend then > it'll be more like $1k. Recall that the fixed costs are only $850- > ish.) Yeah the key here is to have some serious JFDI going on. Let's just see what kind of traction we get. > Does it matter if TPF spends $2000 and it turns out to work out > great? I can answer that one -- yes, it matters. In a very > positive way. This can be a real flag for us to wave in the future. Plus, it lets us say "Why should we give money to TPF?" Really, what do we do with our money that can be more important than sponsoring projects and getting people involved? This will do both. The "getting people involved" is really key to me. I'm sure there are a lot of people between Chicago and Madison who would like to do stuff but don't know how. One thing that I just told Pete, as he's working on the announcement, is to put something in there saying "If you're in the area, and you're the slightest bit interested, come by! Even if it's just for the free pizza!" We WANT PEOPLE TO GET INVOLVED. I personally think that getting new blood involved in projects is even MORE important than having existing people work on them. Sure, it's great that we paid Nick Clark to work on p5, but why did we have to? Because nobody else was willing or able to. What if somewhere in Madison, WI is our next great Perl 5 core hacker and none of us (including him) knows it yet? We should be doing whatever we can to scour for talent! xoxo, Andy -- Andy Lester => andy at petdance.com => www.petdance.com => AIM:petdance From andy at petdance.com Wed Aug 23 12:40:03 2006 From: andy at petdance.com (Andy Lester) Date: Wed, 23 Aug 2006 14:40:03 -0500 Subject: [Hackathons] Announcement prep In-Reply-To: <1ACF2B2B-672E-4D59-BD34-D0D611D0F6D9@petdance.com> References: <8B403EF1-C34C-435B-A02A-F3AA8CC2ED3B@petdance.com> <20060821163328.9114.qmail@web60818.mail.yahoo.com> <5bef4baf0608211029s332ea4fdg68e5e5ca28e282a2@mail.gmail.com> <1ACF2B2B-672E-4D59-BD34-D0D611D0F6D9@petdance.com> Message-ID: Pete and I are working on announcements and FAQ and so on. We're not done, but welcome your input. See our work at http://hackathon.info The Announcement page is what I'm most interested in. I also want to have some projects on the Projects page so that people will be interested in coming to help out. xoa -- Andy Lester => andy at petdance.com => www.petdance.com => AIM:petdance From andy at petdance.com Sat Aug 26 22:40:10 2006 From: andy at petdance.com (Andy Lester) Date: Sun, 27 Aug 2006 00:40:10 -0500 Subject: [Hackathons] I plan to announce the Hackathon on Monday Message-ID: <5E46D519-780B-43DB-B108-AA73F7FB5203@petdance.com> I'm this close to being ready to announce the Chicago Hackathon. Pete and I have been working on http://hackathon.info/ The only thing keeping me back is talking to the Holiday Inn on Monday. I don't think they'll be cheaper, although they'll be nicer, from what I can tell. I'll get some numbers and see how they come out, but I think the place I've got worked out now will be best. So, once I verify for my own sanity on Monday that the Holiday Inn isn't better, I will: * sign the contract with the Country Inn & Suites * announce in many many different places -- Andy Lester => andy at petdance.com => www.petdance.com => AIM:petdance From wnodom at tmtowtdi.com Mon Aug 28 12:47:16 2006 From: wnodom at tmtowtdi.com (Bill Odom) Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2006 14:47:16 -0500 Subject: [Hackathons] I plan to announce the Hackathon on Monday In-Reply-To: <5E46D519-780B-43DB-B108-AA73F7FB5203@petdance.com> References: <5E46D519-780B-43DB-B108-AA73F7FB5203@petdance.com> Message-ID: <44F34844.60509@tmtowtdi.com> Andy Lester wrote: > I'm this close to being ready to announce the Chicago Hackathon. > > Pete and I have been working on http://hackathon.info/ > > The only thing keeping me back is talking to the Holiday Inn on > Monday. I don't think they'll be cheaper, although they'll be nicer, > from what I can tell. I'll get some numbers and see how they come > out, but I think the place I've got worked out now will be best. > > So, once I verify for my own sanity on Monday that the Holiday Inn > isn't better, I will: > > * sign the contract with the Country Inn & Suites > * announce in many many different places > Looks good to me. I say go for it as soon as you're ready. Thanks, Bill P.S. - You and Pete rock. From andy at petdance.com Mon Aug 28 12:48:25 2006 From: andy at petdance.com (Andy Lester) Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2006 14:48:25 -0500 Subject: [Hackathons] I plan to announce the Hackathon on Monday In-Reply-To: <44F34844.60509@tmtowtdi.com> References: <5E46D519-780B-43DB-B108-AA73F7FB5203@petdance.com> <44F34844.60509@tmtowtdi.com> Message-ID: <66DA8CE8-B025-4709-9282-D11D44A4FCAD@petdance.com> On Aug 28, 2006, at 2:47 PM, Bill Odom wrote: > Looks good to me. I say go for it as soon as you're ready. Oh good, 'cause I just clicked 'Send'. -- Andy Lester => andy at petdance.com => www.petdance.com => AIM:petdance From wnodom at tmtowtdi.com Mon Aug 28 12:49:17 2006 From: wnodom at tmtowtdi.com (Bill Odom) Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2006 14:49:17 -0500 Subject: [Hackathons] I plan to announce the Hackathon on Monday In-Reply-To: <66DA8CE8-B025-4709-9282-D11D44A4FCAD@petdance.com> References: <5E46D519-780B-43DB-B108-AA73F7FB5203@petdance.com> <44F34844.60509@tmtowtdi.com> <66DA8CE8-B025-4709-9282-D11D44A4FCAD@petdance.com> Message-ID: <44F348BD.40704@tmtowtdi.com> Andy Lester wrote: > On Aug 28, 2006, at 2:47 PM, Bill Odom wrote: > >> Looks good to me. I say go for it as soon as you're ready. > > Oh good, 'cause I just clicked 'Send'. > Timing is everything. :)