[tpm] UNS: Meeting feedback and suggestions.

[Mike Stok]

On Feb 1, 2010, at 9:21 PM, Abram Hindle wrote:

> Mike Stok wrote:
>>    * How many people would be interested in hackathons?  Last year
>>      Kartik mentioned he might be able to do a game hackathon In
>>      February.  
> 
> I don't understand what hackathon means in this context. To me a
> hackathon is a bit more than 2 hrs and it has people getting together
> and hacking on one or more related projects.
> 
> Maybe I misunderstood.
> 
> If that is the case I propose bootstrapping such a hackathon with a bit
> of a tutorial as a meeting. An interactive perl mongers where people
> should bring and share laptops and hack at a tutorial game.
> 
> There is a possibility of a quasi-hackathon-type of meeting. The
> presenter provides source code & maybe content. For instance Kartik's
> game hackathon could also be spun as a meeting. If one made a tiny game
> framework, like a boardgame/logic game or a pong like game or a breakout
> style game or just a jumping scrolling platformer. Then allow room for
> modifications. The meeting could be a walk-through of the some
> possibilities. How small changes to rules can change the game, etc.
> 
> This kind of meeting could bootstrap a hackathon ;)

That's the kind of thing I had in mind.  There was a Ruby hackathon a while ago where we got some space off Tucows for a Saturday or Sunday and had agreed on a project before hand.  I think it lasted about 6 to 8 hours.  The thing I observed was that quite a lot of time is spent getting up to speed if people aren't familiar with the project, so some up front planning and preparation could have made it more effective.

If people have been to successful hackathons and have an idea about what to do and what not to do then we could avoid some obvious pitfalls.

Maybe a meeting which gives an overview of the material and what might be achieved would be step 1, and the hackathon could happen soon (inside a couple of weeks?) after that.

I think that 2 hours is a little short for a "real" hackathon, especially if there are setup wrinkles (e.g. no working network !)

That's just my $0.02...

Mike

-- 

Mike Stok <mike at stok.ca>
http://www.stok.ca/~mike/

The "`Stok' disclaimers" apply.