[okfn-labs] Open Data Maker Night

Thu Aug 8 17:06:13 UTC 2013

Hi Olaf,

I went along to my first open data maker night on Tuesday – it was
ace! Just to give an idea of how it worked on the night (from a
punter’s perspective):

 * arrive and mingle
 * general intro to the night from Rufus. This included getting
everyone online with wireless password, getting everyone into the
shared google doc via a custom bitly link. *5-10 mins*.
 * brief spoken intros from everyone attending – name, interests,
special skills. *Max 30 seconds each*. Each person also adds this info
to the google doc.
 * pitches from attendees who had specific project ideas, or discrete
bits of work that could be done on the night. *3-5 mins each*. Brief
info on each also added to the google doc.

 * self-organise to discuss, get coding etc
 * eat some pizza / drink some fizzy pop / have a chat
 * continue coding, then very informally (like, as groups decide they
are ready) get on the projector and present what’s been achieved!

My own experience, I mostly discussed project ideas with people
(really useful), but got to help one guy set up a node.js project
locally, and together we submitted a pull request closing an issue, so
that felt like some progress. Other people got loads more done – felt
like an evening well-spent!

Hope that’s helpful,
Andy
--
Andy Lulham (@andylolz)

On 8 August 2013 11:48, Anders Pedersen <anders.pedersen at okfn.org> wrote:
> Hi Olaf,
>
> This is great to hear. I am looping in the Labs list, as others might have
> ideas to chip in.
>
> On 8 August 2013 04:54, Olaf Veerman <olaf.veerman at flipside.org> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Anders,
>> As we talked about in DC, we're planning to organize a meetup in Lisbon
>> around Open Data on Thursday August 29. On the OFKNLabs page, I read about
>> Open Data Maker Nights and it seems to suit what we want for such a night.
>
>
> Sounds great!
>>
>>
>>
>> To focus people's time and energy, I'd like to prepare some tasks for
>> people with different skills and different skill levels. On the data
>> wrangling side, we can propose to take a look at some of the spending data
>> we saw in DC, but I know we'll have some designers + developers as well. Do
>> you have any ideas for this, or can somebody else at OKFN provide us some
>> tips on organizing a Maker Night?
>
>
> The join page of Labs lists the current issues and ideas for new projects.
> That might be helpful for finding stuff to hack on.
>
> As for guides, this doc from the London Maker Night both includes various
> project specific guides (e.g. for OpenSpending) as well as examples of stuff
> people have been working on at previous Maker Nights.
>
> Really looking forward to hear more about Lisbon Maker Night!
>
>>
>> best,
>> Olaf
>>
>> --
>> Flipside
>> www.flipside.org | +351 926 5264 65
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> Anders Pedersen
>
> Community Coordinator  |  skype: anpehej  |  @anpe
>
> The Open Knowledge Foundation
>
> Empowering through Open Knowledge
>
> http://okfn.org/  |  @okfn  |  OKF on Facebook  |  Blog  |  Newsletter
>
>
> OpenSpending | http://openspending.org | @openspending
>
> School of Data | http://schoolofdata.org | @schoolofdata
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> okfn-labs mailing list
> okfn-labs at lists.okfn.org
> http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/okfn-labs
> Unsubscribe: http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/options/okfn-labs
>