Things We've Learned at OpenCon

[Daniel-Mietchen]

Submission name: Things We've Learned at OpenCon

Contact lead: @Daniel-Mietchen

Issue area: #OpenAccess, #OpenData, #OpenEducation, #OpenResearch

Region: #Global

Issue Type: #Project

Types of Support Needed: #Advocacy_and_Policy, #Coding, #Communications, #Community_GrassrootsOrganizing, #EventPlanning, #Fundraising, #GraphicDesign, #Research, Documentation

One of the things that is hardest to document about an event but possibly most valuable to know about is the things that were learned there. Let's use this ticket to at least try to address that for OpenCon.

If a ticket like this on GitHub is not a good way for you to express what you've learned, then try using the hashtags #opencon AND #thingsIvelearned together, i.e. #opencon #thingsIvelearned on Twitter or in the collaborative notes.

[char-siuu-bao]

@Daniel-Mietchen, could you please submit your project through the project form? https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd_ptZY4xgc4vZAiMmsrjspPF3gUxOfOj_iBQ5ign3f5n5bqw/viewform

This will give you details on how to tag this properly so others can discover your issue and also so that it shows up on the front end of our do-a-thon website.

This is all documented on our page for getting projects submitted and approved on the do-a-thon website, thanks: http://doathon.opencon2017.org/project

[Daniel-Mietchen]

Not sure this qualifies as a "project", but I will try, though doing it in parallel to note taking and the Twitter storm is a challenge, so it may have to wait for the next break.

First thing that came up: https://twitter.com/AsuraEnkhbayar/status/929292099199098880

[char-siuu-bao]

OK, we'd just like to keep this repo to do-a-thon projects to minimize confusion to those new to Github. Thanks.

[Daniel-Mietchen]

OK, it's a break for me now, since I can't join the story circles remotely.

The learning experiences I had so far were

• OpenCon uses GitHub differently than most repos (but very similar to the Open Data Day doathon, where we had a similar ticket). Will try to follow the instructions and document my observations.
• Ansura's tweet listed above reminded me that the ThingsIvelearned hashtag has a shorter version, TIL. I kinda knew that but given that we now have more characters on Twitter, maybe we can make the hashtags a bit less cryptic as well, which probably fits with the OpenCon aims of making things more accessible to a wider audience
• An interesting way to get around connectivity issues: https://twitter.com/jangondol/status/929276546434596865

[Daniel-Mietchen]

I just submitted the form. Here are some of my observations:

• it is odd to have to use a Google form to post an issue on GitHub
  • this makes it easier for people who do not have a GitHub account (likely the majority of OpenCon attendees) to post something
  • in light of the above, it is still odd but acceptable that it would be harder for people who do have a GitHub account to post an issue to GitHub through this mechanism
  • I hope the conversion from Google form fields to GitHub issues and labels is reasonably automated. If so, I'd like to find out how.
• the form was really geared towards things to be done during the doathon, i.e. on Monday, but my ticket here
  • was not a project in the sense of a project to be worked on during the doathon, though I've now shoehorned it into one
  • was an attempt to provide a channel to document the things learned immediately, rather than waiting for them to be documented on Monday
• I learned at the Open Data Day Doathon that GitHub labels can only be used by collaborators on the repo, which means that if labels are to be used for navigating the issues,
  • everybody posting or at least labeling issues has to be or become a collaborator on the repo. as per above, it is probably fair to assume that a majority of OpenCon attendees are not familiar enough with GitHub to take on that role, so I understand that a different mechanism might be merited. However, a simpler solution might be to just make the GitHub users collaborators on this repo.
  • conversely, people who are not collaborators on the repo can't label issues, so their tickets risk not being discoverable/ navigable in a way that is consistent with other tickets. A form can help ease the pain here, so it seems like a reasonable choice.
• This repo is about the doathon specifically, not OpenCon more generally. I was aware of that when posting the ticket, but chose to post it here nonetheless, since neither Twitter nor the collaborative notes doc seem to be the most suitable way to document learning experiences, while I think a GitHub ticket could do a decent job here. I can understand that twisting the repo's use this way may be irritating.

[char-siuu-bao]

The google form is because our front end site is wraps a spreadsheet that displays the challenges and projects for the do-a-thon website for non-Github users to explore.

The tags are embedded in the instructions to include metadata that is sent to participants. I've added that to your submission now.

Many people don't use Github and it was important that we design the do-a-thon to be as inclusive as possible.

[Bubblbu]

I like this idea a lot!

Especially exploiting the immediate nature of Tweets for things we found out, but wouldn't probably be documented or processed is great.

Also I saw that in the first comment you used #thingsivelearned, but on Twitter I saw #thingswelearned and #thingsIlearned.

After OpenCon we could create a Twitter Moment based on "#OpenCon AND (#TIL OR #thingsIlearned)"

[Daniel-Mietchen]

Here's another one: https://twitter.com/ma_schliebs/status/929354638029217792

[Daniel-Mietchen]

https://twitter.com/DanSholler/status/929636724866781184

[Daniel-Mietchen]

https://twitter.com/tararobertson/status/929631644901920769 https://twitter.com/tararobertson/status/929638458334896128

[Daniel-Mietchen]

https://twitter.com/neurohazardous/status/929640867794702336

[npscience]

this weekend I learned... that when you can't connect to the wifi through an apple device, navigating to airport.us in the browser redirects you to that wifi's login page. Thanks @pennybphd - this has been invaluable!

[Daniel-Mietchen]

I've just tweeted the above examples using the #OpenCon #ThingsWeLearned #TIL hashtags and asked for more learning moments to be shared.