Idea for virtual rOpenHack2021 experiment

Part 1. Community Call on tools in a research domain e.g. hydrology or Antarctic

Anyone can attend, plus prepares people for Part 2.
Developers talk about the R and rOpenSci tools and example use cases in that domain; signal what kinds of input they want (documentation, user feedback, work on open issues).
Make explicit that we value all types of contributions; does not require coding.
Prior to call, devs label their GitHub issues in prep for Part 2
maybe have 30 min at end for people to chat with devs about what they might want to work on?

Requires registration and participating in or watching video of Part 1
Prior to event, participants should comment on issue(s) they'd like to work on and get response / advice / approval of approach from maintainer
people work in different Zoom rooms where rooms are labelled and people can choose to move between rooms e.g. work on specific tools, help desk, social “take a break” room
Enable zoom whiteboard. (Or google jam. Miro or mural)
Every hack room has at least one tool developer
Everyone leaves having met at least one developer in that domain and one member of rOpenSci team
End with 5 min presentation by each dev on what things people contributed and what the devs got out of it
One goal is to have pull requests merged after the event
Publish summary blog post

2 weeks prior to Part 2, send short questionnaire (copied from past unconfs) to help people mentally prep
Have 1:1 or 1:3 pre-hack meetings with participants to prepare them to participate & demo platform if needed.

event facilitator should be separate from other roles
people who monitor zoom chat, slack, mute folks in zoom, create zoom breakout rooms,
run help desk room
Run “take a break” social room

Participating packages must have open issues labelled help wanted, documentation, good first issue etc
- What label should we use to indicate the developer wants user feedback?
maybe we can host a 1.5-hr rOpenSci label-athon prior to Part 1, open to anyone who wants to set aside time to label issues

Requires time and effort of a group of developers in a research domain
Timezones!
- depending on the research domain and its developers, run it at best time for them and consider running a second edition with different developer-leads in a different time slot

Thanks to Rachael Ainsworth and Anthony Arendt for conversations as @steffilazerte and I hatched this plan.