[hackerspaces] November 2010 - Synchronous Hackathon

[Robert Fitzsimons]

The upcoming November Synchronous Hackathon [1] will take place over the
weekend of the 20th and 21st of November.  It is also the one year
anniversary of the first event.  So after some discussions during recent
call-in's we're going to try something a little different.  

The intention is to increase the inter-space activity by using the
regular hackathon to run a BarCamp [2] style conference, along with
friendly challenges and common activities.  Using audio/video streaming,
IRC and other internet resources for communication over the weekend.


BarCamp

So for the BarCamp part we are asking spaces to come forward and stream
a talk/class/whatever during a timeslot over the weekend.  Most spaces
run talks why not give one to an international audience?

I've started collecting some details on the wiki page [1].


Challenge

A little bit of friendly competition can spice things up.  So we are
asking spaces to form a team (or teams) and see if you can come up an
interesting solution for the weekend challenge.

The challenge should have multiple solutions, not cost much or need
special equipment.  Each team would report on their results in a blog
post or webpage and if suitable a wining team could be picked, and have
the honor of picking the next challenge.

Our current idea for the first challenge would be for teams to come up
with a way of transporting a delicious cupcake by post to another space
without damage.  We've just got to flesh out some basic ground rules
type of postage allowed, max size, max weight, etc.


Common Activity

This is fairly open-ended it could be something like a worldwide coding
relay, shared story/song writing, a capture the flag, anything goes.
Just pick a couple of activities to work on over the weekend and see
what we come up with.

Two activities I like to see worked on in November would be.  Code or a
system that would function as a video version of IRC which would help
with following the activities during a hackathon.  And a website and
tools which could be used to track activities before, during and after
the hackathon.


I think it'll be fun, so get your space involved.  We can try and expand
some of the details on this list.

Robert

1.  http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/Synchronous_Hackathon/2010-11-20
2.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BarCamp