[Chicago] aaronsw memorial hackathon documentation

[sheila miguez]

On Wed, Jan 23, 2013 at 9:53 AM, Skip Montanaro <skip at pobox.com> wrote:
> Sheila,
>
> Can I just show up with my laptop and be given a task?

The thing about chipy is that we aren't organized, so what I posted
was just a suggestion. I'm not in charge, and I just want to suggest
some ideas for the next meeting. I'm not even sure people will want to
have any project type of activity. Maybe people would rather have
talks.

If people do want to do some projects, I've observed that OpenHatch
does these types of things by picking out bite-sized tasks for people
to tackle. I've never done that, so I asked for advice in #openhatch.
When I did, it was suggested that I do some research and playtesting
to figure out bitesized tasks if a project doesn't already have things
categorized this way.

Does that make sense? so, if we do have some project based things
planned for a meeting, we'd want to make sure bite-sized tasks exist
so that people can just show up and have things to do.


> [...]  My work has
> generally not overlapped all that much with the sort of work Aaron
> did, and I've not done anything web-based in several years (only now
> dipping my toe in the Django water).
> OTOH, I have this idea for a Django-based bike serial number database
> to assist owners of vintage bikes in dating their vintage steeds.  You
> can see an initial stab at it as just a Google Spreadsheet (limited to
> just Medici bikes, a now defunct small builder from Southern
> California in the 70s-90s):
>
> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AmInO7qBBGRXdExGR2tNNzNEQk1sbUlyd2d1a0xVQ3c#gid=0
>
> I have an initial stab at things on my laptop, with little more than a
> schema, a few records, and a user interface a four-year-old could have
> done better.  Maybe someone would like to help me flesh out the user
> interface?  I don't know if that fits in with the theme of the evening
> or not.  I'd be happy to push what I have so far to Heroku.

Actually, I'd like for more meetings where people get to do project
based work, so if you want to suggest this for a meeting I think it
would be cool and I'd give a +1.

Otherwise, do you have Thursdays free? Some people meet on the 1st and
3rd Thursdays of the month at Ps:one for python office hours. I know
also that FreeGeek has open hack times as well. Saturdays. I can't
make all of the FreeGeek times, but have been trying to make all of
the Ps:one times.

So, if chipy meetings are more talk oriented, we can have hacknights
at Ps:one or FreeGeek. If Thursdays are bad, we could have a different
time, but right now if I host, I'd have to juggle a lot because of
other things I'm doing at the moment (helping with an arduino workshop
in Feb, Pycon in March, and I want to pick a time for a new beginners
workshop before Pycon if possible, or perhaps an intermediate one,
etc.)




-- 
sheila