[ogdcamp] Let's hack!

Wed Jul 20 18:34:01 UTC 2011

Dear Andrew,

thanks for the feedback! Comments inline:

On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 6:19 PM, Andrew Stott <andrew.stott at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Friedrich
>
> Many thanks for this.  Some comments below.
>
> Regards
>
> Andrew
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ogdcamp-bounces at lists.okfn.org [mailto:ogdcamp-bounces at lists.okfn.org]
> On Behalf Of Friedrich Lindenberg
> Sent: 19 July 2011 18:57
> To: ogdcamp at lists.okfn.org
> Subject: [ogdcamp] Let's hack!
>
> Hi all,
>
> I've been drafted by Jonathan to contribute to the planning related to hack
> days, workshops etc. around the camp. For those that don't know
> me: I'm a coder with OKF and involved with the various open gov data
> projects.
>
> From what I heard, there is relative freedom with regards to the programme
> and judging by the diverse group that appeared at last year's camp, there
> also isn't a particular target audience we need to cater to. Therefore, I'd
> love some +1/-1 on the following ideas:
>
> - the 1-day pre-event topic workshop, aka. "Learn ScraperWiki for Fun and
> Profit"
>
> +1 - a valuable tool, and also need to bring sense of community and building
> on what has gone before.
>
> - the chat-by-day-and-hack-by-night "Data Dungeon"
> - the it-smells-in-here-and-there-are-no-women "Hacker Track" (in programme)
>
> -1 - I understand the ethic, but need to be careful not to stereotype.

Just to be clear: I didn't actually propose we should have a track
without women, just that we discard the usual balance between more
policy-focussed and technical sessions in one room and go into deep
techno terrain. Not too excited about this myself, however.

> - the 24-hour "get-this-database-pretty" challenge
>
> 0 - good exercise to move the agenda on, but not sure how impactful the
> results would be (many people won't understand how bad the data is to start
> with).  Could usefully involve groups like OpenCorporates.

I do think we would need to have a follow-up plan for this to make
sure things don't get lost, but after all this is the kind of
datahubbish thing we want to develop as a practice anyway. My concern
here is more about letting people do what they want to do vs. forcing
them onto some common goal.

> - micro-wg meetups for popular project classes (legislation tracking,
> spending, mapping)
>
> +1 - good focus, smaller groups will give greater interaction and
> relationship building.  Also useful for generating data/examples for people
> to use for improvement back in their home jurisdication
>
> - the general data science fair
>
> +1 in principle yes, and could help build bridges between the Open Data
> community and the Big Data community to mutual benefit.
>
> - unborn projects speed dating
>
> 0 could work, requires careful design.  Variants could be "Dragon's Den" or
> "The Apprentice" ....

I like the "Dragon's Den" thing, haven't seen that before, but its
probably more competitive rather than cooperative.

> - a fossmanuals-style book writing effort
>
> -1 not a lot of interaction in this?

When done Adam Hyde-style, there is: lots of brainstorming, joint
creation of a topic map etc. but still pretty theoretic.

Best regards,

 Friedrich