How to organise a Hack Session

[kabitakis]

The process we use to organise our meetups seems to work well. We can not use the same process for the hack sessions. Meetups are events arranged on a specific date that can be attended by a large number of people. Hack sessions must be proposed somehow but they can be scheduled for any date, they must be scheduled quickly and flexibly and only a few people (5-10) can participate on each session. We can have different groups of course. Any ideas on how to do this using the github issues?

[Hotshuk]

*work well. :oP

[kabitakis]

Yes, I'm here to improve my language skills, whatever that is :P

[kabitakis]

We discussed a bit about this yesterday. A possible solution would be:

• Anyone can start a Hack Session.
• It's a good idea to have found at least one other interested member before opening an issue.
• The issue MUST contain:
  • 'hack session' in its title
  • A host
  • A proposed place
  • A proposed date
  • A limit on attendees (I think 8 is a reasonable number to begin with)
  • Some prerequisites such as attendees experience, tools to be installed, tutorials to be followed before the session etc.

Any other ideas would be appreciated!

[zakkak]

Looks reasonable, maybe we should add it to CONTRIBUTING.md and build on top of it with pull requests.

[gsaslis]

:thumbsup: @zakkak 

— Yorgos Saslis

On Sun, Nov 22, 2015 at 4:09 AM, Foivos notifications@github.com wrote:

Looks reasonable, maybe we should add it to CONTRIBUTING.md and build on top of it with pull requests.

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub: https://github.com/devstaff-crete/DevStaff-Heraklion/issues/63#issuecomment-158701015

[sonaht]

I would suggest we do these from meetup.com as well since it looks to be the same (ish) format, plus meetup.com gives the opportunity to limit attendees to a certain number, thus securing the fact that first come first serve up to the limit set, and allows waitlist.

What do u think ?

[maounis]

:+1:

[gsaslis]

@sonaht :thumbsup: 

— Yorgos Saslis

Software Engineer

On Sun, Nov 22, 2015 at 1:59 PM, Frank Maounis notifications@github.com wrote:

:+1:

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub: https://github.com/devstaff-crete/DevStaff-Heraklion/issues/63#issuecomment-158752867

[zakkak]

So the first hack session was successful(?) (and #60 should be probably closed).

Is there any feedback from this first attempt? Thinks we can improve?

Additionally could you give some more details about Office_12? Is it open to the public (as clients)? Their website is not very informative. What was the arrangement about the hack session, did you pay something/somehow for the hosting of the event? Are we welcome to perform other hack sessions there, etc.?

Sorry for my many questions :)

Edit: A typo and an extra \n removed

[zakkak]

Hmm I just noticed it was rescheduled for the 1st of Dec?

As a side note, maybe we should include hack sessions in the website as well.

[kabitakis]

Hi @zakkak, I agree we should keep some details on each session, but I'm not sure if we should use our website, a github repo or both. I think we'll conclude on this really soon after the first sessions.

Office_12 is a small coworking office I own, however it's not in production mode yet. For now it hosts friends & family business events mostly, but it's going to be open to the public in about a month or so. The space is about 150sq.m., including an open space, a meeting room, a private office and a kitchen, and it can host up to 15 people for their day-to-day work. It's also open to the clients.

You are very welcome to perform other hack sessions there (no charge), as far as there there is availability :smile:

[kabitakis]

Some insights from the first completed hack session.

• 8 users/laptops is good limit to start. Above this limit, you need more advanced organisational level, more strict planning, create groups etc.
• Keep it at least 3-4 hours long, or it may be unproductive.
• We worked on 7 Digital Ocean VMs and we experienced no network issues.
• Create a Gitter channel and add the participants! You need to share data quickly.
• It helps (a lot) to have a whiteboard and a projector/large screen.
• It helps (a lot) to everybody have done their homework (examples, tutorials etc).

Related stuff: http://www.meetup.com/DevStaff-A-Developer-Community-Gathering-In-Crete/ https://github.com/devstaff-crete/docker-hack-sessions https://gitter.im/kabitakis/docker-hack-session

[gsaslis]

wow - very interesting insights! Thanks for sharing!

[maounis]

Thanks! Very helpful!

[kabitakis]

Some notes from this issue have been moved to a new section How to Start a Hack Session. We can close this one and add more suggestions to the new section using pull requests. Thank you all!