[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Will the "coding hackfest" survey submissions be made available?

[Dan Scott]

2009/5/18 Karen Schneider <kgs at esilibrary.com>:
> Dan, I will try to answer your question(s) clearly. Please let me know
> if this works for you.

Thanks - and sure.

> 1. Submissions for the hackfest. Out  of 84 survey responses, there
> were only three entries for hackfest suggestions, probably because the
> survey question was phrased to measure interest (since the committee
> was being careful with allocating resources), not tease out the
> topics.

Ah, I understand; I failed the survey reading comprehension test by
reading into it what I expected/wanted to see rather than what was
intended.

> The question was: "Check off any or all of these proposed
> hackfests (or brainfests!) you might participate in on May 20."
>
> There were four suggestions the survey offered for "hackfests or brainfests":
>
> Half-day, high-level documentation discussion
> "Meet with a Developer" (half-hour time slots)
> Half-day Sysadmin Survival Skills
> Hands-on coding ("Classic Hackfest")
>
> Then there was a comment box to add other ideas.

Right, given that there had been no other call for hackfest ideas,
when I read "other ideas", I interpreted this as the textbox for
entering hackfest project ideas. I assumed that when the term
"hackfest" was used in conjunction with a conference about a specific
library technology, that it would be based on the same definition of
"hackfest" as used with the predominant library technology conference
in Canada (Access). That could just be my ugly Canadian-centric
perspective showing through, though.

> Of the two relevant
> submissions (one was an offtopic comment), one was "hooking into
> Evergreen"--which feels consonant with the other ideas as a
> high-level, half- or full-day sort of project. Then there was one
> submission that wasn't clear it was a list of specific coding ideas:
>
> "Back to the server: an accessible, crawlable, functional catalog
> (with AJAX as a bonus instead of an essential core) !FAIL: build a
> regression testing framework Stacking added content a la Ümläüt Me
> talk LDAP one day ISBN10/ISBN13 equivalence NOW More than MARC:
> indexing & searching other formats M8K3.MY C8LL numbers (L355)
> abnormal! House of the RISing sun: native export to RefWorks et al
> ruby.push "OpenSRF" <?php echo "OpenSRF"; ?>"

The latter would be the ten (not even ten-odd) specific coding project
suggestions I made. Looks like the survey tool treated linefeeds as
spaces, which certainly doesn't help - but I'm glad that the
suggestions weren't lost. Thanks for digging them up.

> I think there was a suggestion in your post that in future conferences
> the conference find a means to collectively discuss hackfest ideas
> (and as someone who is not a developer I would expand that to include
> the "anyfest" concept).  This is a really good idea (the mailing lists
> feel appropriate for that, yes?) and I would add that the Evergreen
> wiki already has a place for suggestions for next year's conference.
> We will also survey attendees after the conference but please don't
> hesitate to add your ideas.

Discussing the specific ideas on the mailing list would take away the
element of surprise associated with an Access-style hackfest (I guess
mine are public now), but as noted we don't have to slavishly follow
the Access hackfest style. For this year, we could open the coding
hackfest session by brainstorming ideas. It would be fun to bring an
element of competition back to the event; maybe we could self-organize
some awards ("outstandingly clever project title", "most obscure
programming language", etc). I noticed that there's no formal timeslot
for presenting the results of the hackfest, which reduces performance
incentive (oh the fame! oh the spotlight!). If the other developers
are interested, we could try to finagle a single lightning talk slot
to summarize the hackfest results; I guess that will be up to the
panel that decides which proposed lightning talks make the cut.

> Regarding the time, the idea that the hackfest might reasonably start
> later than 9 came from a couple of developers who commented to me that
> they didn't really expect to get started at 9.

Sure, with no agenda for the event (hackfest introduction, unveiling
of ideas, forming of groups, etc), there's no incentive for everyone
to show up at 9:00. Those developers are absolutely right.

> But we have a crew on
> site tomorrow working hard to make sure the resources are
> appropriately configured and available at 9, and then it will be up to
> individuals to be there or not as their body clocks determine. Does
> that work for you?

Sure. I can mentally substitute "hang out with Evergreen developers"
for "hackfest", and if nobody else is there early I'll be happy to
grab some coffee, log onto IRC, and do some Evergreen work. It'll be
sort of like being at work, except with a commute of 1,900 km instead
of 1.9 km, and hopefully with warmer weather.

> Does this work for you?

Sure.

-- 
Dan Scott
Laurentian University