Plan OpenCon Doathon

[JosephMcArthur]

• [x] agenda
• [x] room-setups
• [x] sat / sun programming to support

[JosephMcArthur]

Okay, I've started to more fully lay out everything to think about here & the first sketches of how it might work. Early days still.

Questions to consider throughout

• How does this work with the unconference?
• How do we use the 3rd day most effectively? How can this be supported by the before, during & post-con programming
• How do we use workshops to support this?
• How does this work with community activities?
• How does our fundraising efforts support this?
• How can satellites play into this?
• How can this be used to facilitate mentoring & regional support?
• How can this play well with story circles?
• How can talks / keynotes support this?
• How does "culture change at scale" happen here
• How does the doathon be as unique & exciting as the advocacy day in the open space. Why is it memorable & not just another conference hack with few outcomes.
• how does this work with live?
• Do we need a webcast for this day (can we save some $$$)?

Resources

What's at hand to deliver the day well?

• Can plan & work earlier than is possible with the advocacy day
• Ace OC for this type of day
• Can work with Mozilla-types
• We have data on participants, and know they skills
• We may have some money???
• We have lots of expert staff on-site who're usually in meetings during the 3rd day (Raym could be cool to have on site, not a crazy amount of business skill about!).
• We can seed the room with great people

Challenges

• Staff often kinda tired by day 3...
• No tech support on staff, which would be hella helpful
• Catering for people at different points
  • Not got an idea, don't feel ready to "do"
  • Not got an idea, ready to do
  • Got an idea
  • got an idea & work around it

^ these are probably personas that we should be working with throughout.

• Facilitating 200 people (maybe virtual stuff too)

Goals / objectives

• Support current projects
• Have ideas for & support new projects
• Fuel community work after OpenCon

Do we have issues goals? Like promoting work on:

• RPT
• Big deals
• Culture change

Activities

What are the broad activities we should be doing? What's currently in my head as a plan.

Pre-con

• A webcast, or some preparation activity around the doathon
• Giving participants a chance to prep. Perhaps open canvas etc etc.
• Get folks into small regional cohorts to support each other before, during & ofter con?

Saturday / Sunday

• Story circles are "as is" from last year with minor improvements
• unconference is retained as a place for discussion, ideation, issue highlighting. A time to talk.
• Workshop is on practical skills? Maybe for regional bonding?

Do-a-thon day

• Ideas brewing.

Post-con

• holding project community calls?
• checking up with folks
• convening cohort calls

Tool development

• tool for helping people find things to work on like whatcanidoformozilla.org but just for this event
• upgraded tool from v.1 from collaborate to help people reach out to folks with skills they need
• steal tools & ideas generated during open data day work for here (like help-desking)
• musical github for the event
• can we reuse some of the great stuff Mozilla made

[rchampieux]

@JosephMcArthur I'd love to help with this.

[npscience]

Just found this and concur with Robin - count me in if help wanted @JosephMcArthur; I'll add some thoughts to this thread when I have another mo.

[JosephMcArthur]

I'm currently working on a more in-depth plan for the do-a-thon in a gdoc. It's very very rough, and not totally ready for sharing yet but here it is anyway. However, I keep running up against one challenge in imagining how to organize this, basically what technology to use to facilitate an in-person & remote hack that doesn't just focus on code (in fact, far from it).

The current key tasks I want to enable through tech are:

For participants:

• Sharing an idea, project, update or task
• Getting feedback on an idea, project, update or task
• Finding help (either passively or actively)
• Finding someone to give help to aka finding an interesting project
• Getting something meaningful done
• Showing people you support their work even if you can’t help out. For us:
• Measuring success
• free (ish) / easy to get people access to

anything based purely in a physical space isn't going to work as we need to enable remote participants as 1st class participants. The core solution needs to be asynchronous and have decent discoverability (so, no chat only solutions... although we'll likely use one for the event to supplement).

My default option for these tasks is Github & a web page/site dedicated to facilitating participation and lowering the barriers. When I've looked at other hackathons in the space they're also using Github increasingly (ones that don't are more often than not competitive, and so not interested in openness). However, I know this still raises red flags in terms of getting people used to the software (as would Gitlab). If we want to go completely the other direction... we could just use a mailing list and gain most of these abilities to a reasonable level - but lose out on a lot of potential benefits and being able to do fancier things. Perhaps a modern mailing list like discourse is the way to go... but frankly I've found many of these even less usable than Github!

Potentially we could use a Google form & spreadsheet (perhaps with a UI layer like our potential new version of the R2RC speaker's database https://lorrainechu3n.github.io/open_speakers_database/) but I don't immediately know how that would do everything we need. As part of OpenCon Collaborate we have a Google Form which goes to Lorraine, who then updates our site. But that's far too manual for this and doesn't fulfil all the above needs.

Is there a happy medium, something between Github and an email list for this that I'm missing? What other ways have you seen hackathons facilitated in terms of tech? I'm all ears @sparcopen/staff-opencon / @sparcopen/oc-opencon.

[Bubblbu]

I really like the idea of having Git in the background to manage versioning + provide a more intuitive and less complex interface to do the writing/editing.

Maybe this could be a potential solution? (Haven't tried it myself yet...) https://www.penflip.com/

[npscience]

Honestly, and this may be controversial, for more quickfire contributions in an easier interface than github, Slack has been really useful in my experience. It needs people to be active on there, but it is very intuitive (more so than github). The key benefit is the flexibility of having different 'chatrooms' for different topics. It can be used in browser or app so you can participate remotely. Emojis = instant feedback (like github). You can see who is present in the 'room'. An open-source alternative is Mattermost, but I've not tried it yet.

The chatroom-approach would be great for getting conversation going and collating resources, where github is better for actually doing the work collaboratively with version control. For non-code projects, Google Docs based around a Slack channel could be the lowest-barrier solution.

[rchampieux]

Hi! I agree with @npscience. We use Slack for Science Hack Day PDX to facilitate many of the tasks @JosephMcArthur outlines above and it's worked out really well (2nd year running). We have a Github repo, but we've tended to use that more for organizer activities. This year we're changing this up a bit and will have "Data and Documentation Zone" where people can get help with Github, version control, and guiding potential contributors more generally.

[JosephMcArthur]

Can either of you add me to an event slack that you seen used like this in the past? I'm sold on having chat be a part of this but never imagined that as a primary place to achieve the tasks above. I think I need to "see it to believe it".

On Mon, 14 Aug 2017 at 18:01 Robin Champieux notifications@github.com wrote:

Hi! I agree with @npscience https://github.com/npscience. We use Slack for Science Hack Day PDX to facilitate many of the tasks @JosephMcArthur https://github.com/josephmcarthur outlines above and it's worked out really well (2nd year running). We have a Github repo, but we've tended to use that more for organizer activities. This year we're changing this up a bit and will have "Data and Documentation Zone" where people can get help with Github, version control, and guiding potential contributors more generally.

— You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/sparcopen/opencon/issues/4#issuecomment-322247239, or mute the thread https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AEuWZy9G9eTf_KO0sPCXCuVN53TtAPk7ks5sYH1fgaJpZM4Nv3iw .

-- Joseph McArthur Assistant Director: Right to Research Coalition http://righttoresearch.org/ Co-Lead/Founder: Open Access Button http://openaccessbutton.org/ Twitter: @Mcarthur_Joe https://twitter.com/Mcarthur_Joe Skype: joseph_mcarthur

[rchampieux]

Hey @JosephMcArthur - I just sent you an invite to the Science Hack Day PDX team - we're just starting to exchange ideas about this year's projects, but if you go back to October of last year, you'll see lots of activity. Also, here is our Github org and repos: https://github.com/ScienceHackDayPDX. I think our use of Slack has been productive, but also a bit messy : -) There are improvements and suggested practices we're trying to promote this year.

[Bubblbu]

Another possibility would be to use Gitter. It's quite popular among the open-source community (and is since its acquisition by GitLab Open Source itself) and connects closely with GitHub. Has some nice features such as directly linking to GH issues or creating chatrooms for repositories. Furthermore, I think that it's really nice that you don't need an invitation and/or create a new account to simply access the chat history. In order to participate you'd login with your Twitter or GitHub account.

[JosephMcArthur]

Thanks to everyone for their thoughts, I'd love to hear more.

I've started to pull together a fuller plan (rather than a list of questions & considerations) here.

I think a few key questions:

• Do we try and arrange very action focused optional workshops for people during the day or have no programming at all. If don't, do we provide any structured support to help people getting stuff done?
• As in my earlier posts, what is the right way to facilitate collaboration between people and achieve the tasks above
• Given we don't have much time, I've tried to consider some clear goals for the doathon that we might want to encourage people to focus their thoughts around. Do these seem compelling and the right outcomes for us to try and design for:
  • Generate fresh ideas, rapid prototypes, and an understanding of key challenges for new projects by the end of the doathon.
  • Energize existing projects with momentum, enthusiasm, and new contributors to face their biggest challenge.
  • Build on the ideas of OpenCon collaborate and seed it with an active community before, during and after the event to enable the Doathon to have a lasting impact.

[aldirdiri]

@JosephMcArthur A bit off point here, but I would like add few points to this sketch to make the maximum use of the Doathon plan. I believe adding a workshop on how to plan/organize a Doathon would be a great addition to the program.

This way the participants will be prepared to join the Doathon prior to their arrival (webcast), will learn how to plan/organize one, and will then experience how a Doathon will look like. So they will be able to organize ones back home and they may also raise a discussion on the barriers of organizing Doathons in the global south and the ways to overcome during the Doathon Day if they feel there are any. And this can partially answer your two questions of "How do we use the 3rd day most effectively? How can this be supported by the before, during & post-con programming" and "How do we use workshops to support this?".

Regarding your recent questions, I am with the idea of having workshops during the day as long as they are optional.

[npscience]

Some further thoughts/responses:

The doathon itself Considering the personas you've listed, I see no problem in having workshops on specific projects (e.g. full morning/full afternoon) and people dropping in or committing for longer periods of time to work on a project. Some people might go between rooms to shop for a project of interest, others may commit to one project only for the whole time. One of the workshops could be a "how to get your project started" one, and people can drop in for advice from more established project leads, e.g. one of the previous Moz Open Leaders could run a Working Open Workshop. Another could be "how to arrange your own doathon" as per @aldirdiri's suggestion. So there'd be some workshops organised by OC to facilitate, and others organised by project leads to actually do the work. Would that work?

Communication tools @JosephMcArthur Some of the good Slacks I've seen aren't open for me to invite you to, but I've sent you link for Software Sustainability Institute's Collaborations Workshop event this year. They had a doathon on the third day too. At that event, Slack was helpful for connecting people, but several people were talking on Slack instead of listening to talks. I've seen them used well for hackathons - e.g. channels for help-needed, for individual sponsors, for announcements, etc etc. Also, people stay on the Slacks after the conference and discussion/connections often continue. So it's great for community persistence. A problem with Slack is that beyond a certain number of messages, you need to pay to retrieve the history.

There is an open source alternative to Slack, [Mattermost][https://about.mattermost.com/], but I'm not sure how to install/use it or whether it's better than Slack for this purpose. The point is that you can run a private instance, so messaging isn't shared with Slack, the commercial company.

I agree with @Bubblbu re Gitter's features for github, and it's also available as a mobile app. However, I don't find it as intuitive as Slack, and it lacks the feature of threading a conversation and responding to specific things. However, Gitter could be a perfectly fine solution.

Connecting remote people To broaden it beyond in-person, we could follow the MozSprint way and have a series of check-in community calls. So people are contributing/discussing online (github, twitter, mailing forum, however) and then there are bursts of synchronous conversations to give updates and meet each other. Basically, there could be one the evening before to introduce the projects and invite remote contributors (works for US and Europe timezones), one in the morning to get started/meet/see anything done overnight by US folk, one at lunch, one at the end. The aim should be to facilitate remote-local connections and to ensure contributors have the resources they need to contribute remotely.

I notice you've got documentation sprints in the schedule - perhaps these could be kicked off by 10-minute online meetings to bring people together. You could enforce that these meetings are done on Google hangouts/by video call to make remote participation a first-class citizen.

[char-siuu-bao]

Tech/Communication Tools

Just wanted to summarize most of the ideas presented so far on the thread:

• Slack/Google Docs Combo: Low barrier to entry, easy to use, chat function is helpful for getting tasks done and letting remote participants participate in real time.
• GitHub: Clear organization/documentation of all the projects going on, repos useful for project management, project can be browse publicly unlike a slack channel! HOWEVER, might be harder for people to use who have never used Github before. (Although issues is probably the high-level tool that we'd use, which basically functions like a message board and isn't too hard to figure out!)

I think it's possible to do both these things - use Github for higher level documentation, but also Slack for more mundane convos around getting tasks done / Google Docs for collaborative writing, etc... I do think it's important that if we use all these platforms, that they be consolidated and displayed in a user-friendly way to in-person AND potential remote participants. I think we should have a do-a-thon microsite that displays all projects, project descriptions, help needed, and links to the project github and slack channel. That way people can browse easily for projects they are interested, and then easily find links to participate in those projects.

This can be easily organized via Google Sheets/Forms and then integrating with Sheetsu to present a UI layer like we've done for the new speakers database (as Joe pointed out).

I think a microsite is a great way to build momentum for the do-a-thon in the weeks leading up, and to also advertise/recruit projects (both in-person and remote) in advance!!

Super super quick mock-up of what a microsite could look like: https://codepen.io/lchuen/pen/NvzBwP

Workshops

I think optional workshops are a great idea, as long as we have people willing to facilitate them? I imagine the facilitators might also be people who are active in the community and will also be wanting to work on projects during the day. However, I think having optional workshops are important, especially for those who might be trying to figure out what they want to do or need a little bit more guidance before diving into a work session. I think they could also complement existing projects, or clumps of project that could use advice/support on certain themes. I like the idea of doing a workshop on rapid prototyping, and along that same vein I think it would be useful to have a session on design-thinking/problem framing for many folks (so they can be more intentional about the prototypes they are building during the do-a-thon).

[rchampieux]

I'm really keen on the idea of option workshops - and there are some great suggestions in the Google doc. If we keep the workshops compact (maybe an hour or two at most), facilitators and participants will be able to workshop and contribute to projects.

Additionally regarding documentation - at this year's Science Hack Day PDX, we're setting up a Documentation Zone where attendees can come at anytime to get help on this front. Maybe something similar would work for the Doathon?

[JosephMcArthur]

I've spent an embarrassingly long time thinking about this, and not got very far. I have a few things to update on though.

• I'm worried that the workshop idea doesn't really reflect how people work, or help to engage people remotely. Instead, it might make more sense to provide & curate resources up front, and back that up with people who're willing to be "on-call" during the meeting to jump in and share their expertise on the topic & proactively go and help.

• I'm finding the idea of suggesting we use twitter as a chat solution increasingly appealing. For example:

  • 50% of our alumni already use it, meaning we only have to convince 50% to join something (not 100%) and other attendees can help convince people to join & populate with activity.
  • It's easily our most active community space before, during & after the meeting.

  • It's highly discoverable by search engines, and people inside & outside our community

    When I think about that vs Slack (invite only, not discoverable, limited history) and Gitter (still needs Twitter/Github to sign up, used by few, still essentially a private channel) I feel like it stacks up well. A lot of good things come from the meetings twitter presence, and if we direct that into a silo we're likely to lose a lot.

    Of course, there would be cons to Twitter;

  • bigger deal to sign up to twitter (e.g it's not a throw away)
  • little chatroom functionality (although this can be mostly replicated with #'s)

• Regarding platform choices generally, I had a useful conversation about this with @lorrainechu3n. The gist being that if we go the mini-site & spreadsheet approach we can favour a platform, without necessarily stopping anyone using anything else if they want. That potentially side steps a lot of questions (although does introduce some inefficiency).

[npscience]

Apparently this tool - http://lifehacker.com/thread-reader-reformats-tweetstorms-into-text-essays-1798630765 - can assemble twitter threads into essays.

This could deal somewhat with the difficulty of finding twitter convos again later, without the hassle of making storifys. So one option for increasing twitter info persistence.

Also, if people are concerned about joining twitter, they could make a fairly anonymous account for the event, even with a new email for it.

One risk - interference from people outside the event who aren't really engaging as virtual participants. We may need a way to deal with negative interruptions - e.g. A well-phrased tweet from an OC member to act as a reply to shut something down, or a policy to ignore/report tweets. Mind you, any virtual and inclusive platform for will need this kind of forethought.

I'm onboard.

[rchampieux]

I'm onboard too and apologies for the tardy feedback (vacationing 🌴 ). @JosephMcArthur your reasoning for using Twitter as our chat platform makes a lot of sense.

Also @JosephMcArthur, can you can you clarify what you mean by:

I'm worried that the workshop idea doesn't really reflect how people work, or help to engage people remotely. Instead, it might make more sense to provide & curate resources up front, and back that up with people who're willing to be "on-call" during the meeting to jump in and share their expertise on the topic & proactively go and help.

I'm think I may be missing/misunderstaning some context.

[char-siuu-bao]

I'm having some difficulty understanding how functional Twitter would be for chat in terms of a collaborative workspace context - threads get lost, there's a character max; would we organize each do-a-thon project by hashtag? Maybe I'm totally missing the mark on what folks are imagining, would love some clarity! @JosephMcArthur

[Bubblbu]

Do-a-thon page feedback: a few (subjective) comments

• Change the label of the button "November 13, 2017"? Doesn't really tell much about the function of the button. Maybe simply "Read more"?
• The text above "Submit a challenge" still has a hover effect
• I found it hard to read the "What is a do-a-thon?" section because I couldn't quickly parse the structure of the page.
  • Maybe emphasise that the 3 key findings and 3 ways to participate (text in red) are list items and not headers.
  • Is "How does it work" a subheading of "What is a do-a-thon"?

[char-siuu-bao]

Thanks @Bubblbu! @jpolka also mentioned the button thing - we have made it hopefully less confusing now!

And thank you for catching those other stylistic errors - hopefully it's organized a little more intuitively now!

[npscience]

Do-a-thon page feedback

I ❤️ that you can explore projects by contributions needed and region, thank you @lorrainechu3n 💯

Major comments

• I agree with @Bubblbu re hard to parse this amount of text, even after the restructure, and I have to admit I struggle on most of these pages. Some suggestions:
  • For key actions, instead of a link to submit Google form, make it a button to increase visibility on page?
  • Limit column width of text so reader doesn't have to scan full width of computer screen. It's ok for there to be white space at the sides, a more narrow block of text is easier to read (look at github central column for a good width). The "how to use github" section does this well, although I find that text too small, and then the rest of the page goes wide again - I would prefer a consistent experience.
  • Increase spacing between lines, and size and weight of font. I actually struggle to take in the style it's currently in, maybe it's me 😟
  • Make it a competition 🍬 for the webdevs amongst us to code an alternative skin to the site - e.g. dark background, light text on top, to help those with issues reading this page 🤓
• Can projects be linked to challenges? E.g. could any github project or external URL be added to a challenge as a resource? The use case being that many of the "how might we...?" challenges may well have been tackled in the past or be being tackled currently by someone outside the OC sphere, and it would be useful to flag this resource. Is it as simple as establishing the practise of adding a link in the github issue?

Minor comments

• Major headers - I like how they stay underlined to show which page you're on 👍
• Submit Challenge page > Steps for submitting > Step 4 - in text, "instrutions" --> "instructions".
• Same page: "4. Your challenge will now be discoverable..." should be point 5. The links in this bit don't link anywhere yet, intended maybe?
• I like the top tips for signing up to a github account ✨
• Submit Project page > in text, link for Code of Conduct is not permanently underlined and hard to see it's a link to click on.
• Submit Project page > How to lead a project: I'd write a separate page for existing project leads. I wouldn't want to scroll through the 'how to submit' text every time I want to check in on the top tips. So maybe this 'tbc' section is just an intro to link people onto the top tips page? Is it worth linking out to Mozilla's resources here instead, i.e. their open leadership tutorials?
• Project/Challenge browsing page > by issue area > should OER be defined instead of using acronym?

---

Workflow feedback

General point for both workflows: I find it frustrating when I load a GForm then find out there's stuff I need to work out/draft before submitting. Is it possible to include the information required on the main page, e.g. a screenshot of the form or a simple bullet list?

Submit a challenge

It takes me a while to find the link to submit a challenge on this page. I appreciate you probably want to remind people to check existing challenges first, to avoid duplication, but if I'm a returning submitter, I'd like to be able to scan to an obvious link or button.

Submit a project

Easy.

---

I am so grateful that you've made this page. Thank you for all your efforts! 🦄

[rchampieux]

Hi @lorrainechu3n and @JosephMcArthur great work on the site! A few points of feedback for you:

Submit a Challenge

• I think it would be more clear not to mention the design thinking exercises in this first paragraph, as it's unclear if they come into play at the challenge submission or solution/project submission stage.

  Is there a specific issue or problem you want to tackle in Open Research and Education? Here's a chance to share it with the OpenCon Community and work together on designing a solution. We'll provide you with a host of design thinking resources to make your process more efficient.

• Consider flipping the order of the paragraphs below, as the second one more immediately answers the header question of "what do we mean by challenge or problem".

  We're asking you to define the problem you're working on—really understanding what the hurdles are—before jumping straight to a solution. Problem framing helps us zone in on the actual challenges we are working with. This helps avoid the situation of designing a product that doesn't actually address the heart of a problem!

For the do-a-thon, we're encouraging participants to think about problems in terms of "How might we?" statements. This type of framing can encourage us to think big, consider multiple perspectives, and focus on a variety of possibilities rather than fixating on a pre-determined solution.

• In the steps section, I find the terms "requirements" and "approval" a little off-putting. Potential alternatives to requirements = guidelines or scope; potential alternatives to approval = review

• Revise the language below to focus not on avoiding duplicate issues, but the opportunity for working with others passionate about the same problem. I'd suggest something like....Check to see if others have already shared a similar problem and consider joining forces, rather than submitting the same challenge.

Come up with a "How might we___?" statement for your problem. Make sure to explore the challenges others have already submitted to ensure we're not proposing the same problems twice. (If you do see a similar challenge - consider joining forces with them!)

Thanks so much for your work on this - it's awesome, and I'm really looking forward to using it in the wild!

[rchampieux]

Re the submit a challenge form, I would suggest making the form description more succinct - that's a lot of text and it communicates more than you need to get a good and well formatted challenge.

[rchampieux]

The form includes the following issue areas: Open Access, Open Research Data, Open Education, Open Research.

• I think people might be confused about the distinction between Open Research and the other categories. Also, within the context of the do-a-thon are we only focusing on open research data or open data more generally. I'd advocate for the latter.

[rchampieux]

Hi...a little bit more feedback, this time mostlyon the project submission page.

• Step 1 refers to challenges and problems, not projects, which is a little confusing. I think this should be slightly revised to refer more specifically to project submissions.

• I think it could be helpful to provide a couple project examples, as you did on the challenges, page.

• I agree with the comments from others that the pages are a little text heavy. For this page, that could be mitigated with some updated header and line breaks formatting.

[char-siuu-bao]

Converting @npscience and @rchampieux's super helpful feedback into a mini to-do list here to keep track of (& to comment on!)

Actions from Naomi's Feedback

Major comments

• [x] For key actions, instead of a link to submit Google form, make it a button to increase visibility on page

• [x] Limit column width of text so reader doesn't have to scan full width of computer screen. It's ok for there to be white space at the sides, a more narrow block of text is easier to read (look at github central column for a good width). The "how to use github" section does this well, although I find that text too small, and then the rest of the page goes wide again - I would prefer a consistent experience.

• [ ] Increase spacing between lines

• [x] Increase font size

• [ ] Increase weight of font (or maybe switch to a serif? - comment from LOrraine)

• [ ] Think about way to link projects to challenges (we were hoping for challenges to eventually be fed into projects and to write copy for this. i think @JosephMcArthur mentioned the reverse as you suggested before, so we can definitely think about how to structure this.... [Naomi: Is it as simple as establishing the practise of adding a link in the github issue?]

Minor comments

• [x] Submit Challenge page > Steps for submitting > Step 4 - in text, "instrutions" --> "instructions".

• [x] Samepage: "4. Your challenge will now be discoverable..." should be point 5. The links in this bit don't link anywhere yet, intended maybe?

• [x] Submit Project page > in text, link for Code of Conduct is not permanently underlined and hard to see it's a link to click on.

• [ ] Submit Project page > How to lead a project: I'd write a separate page for existing project leads. I wouldn't want to scroll through the 'how to submit' text every time I want to check in on the top tips. So maybe this 'tbc' section is just an intro to link people onto the top tips page? Is it worth linking out to Mozilla's resources here instead, i.e. their open leadership tutorials?

• [x] Project/Challenge browsing page > by issue area > should OER be defined instead of using acronym?

---

Workflow feedback

• [ ] Provide more info on what to expect from Google form. From Naomi: General point for both workflows: I find it frustrating when I load a GForm then find out there's stuff I need to work out/draft before submitting. Is it possible to include the information required on the main page, e.g. a screenshot of the form or a simple bullet list?

• [x] Submit a challenge - add a button to make it obvious. It takes me a while to find the link to submit a challenge on this page. I appreciate you probably want to remind people to check existing challenges first, to avoid duplication, but if I'm a returning submitter, I'd like to be able to scan to an obvious link or button.

[char-siuu-bao]

Actions from Robin's Feedback

• [x] Submit a Challenge page: suggestion to not mention the design thinking exercises in this first paragraph, as it's unclear if they come into play at the challenge submission or solution/project submission stage. (Note from Lorraine: want to make sure design thinking resources are easily noticeable and discoverable though - if at the bottom, folks might not get to it).

• [x] Consider flipping the order of the paragraphs below, as the second one more immediately answers the header question of "what do we mean by challenge or problem".

  We're asking you to define the problem you're working on—really understanding what the hurdles are—before jumping straight to a solution. Problem framing helps us zone in on the actual challenges we are working with. This helps avoid the situation of designing a product that doesn't actually address the heart of a problem! For the do-a-thon, we're encouraging participants to think about problems in terms of "How might we?" statements. This type of framing can encourage us to think big, consider multiple perspectives, and focus on a variety of possibilities rather than fixating on a pre-determined solution.

• [x] In the steps section, I find the terms "requirements" and "approval" a little off-putting. Potential alternatives to requirements = guidelines or scope; potential alternatives to approval = review

• [ ] Revise the language below to focus not on avoiding duplicate issues, but the opportunity for working with others passionate about the same problem. I'd suggest something like....Check to see if others have already shared a similar problem and consider joining forces, rather than submitting the same challenge.

• [ ] Challenge form is too text heavy - make form description more succinct.

[npscience]

Wow, amazingly quick response!

@lorrainechu3n @JosephMcArthur re: linking projects and challenges... I think it could be about establishing a practise using github referencing, yes. The danger of doing this via the OC website is that people might not navigate to the most relevant issue for adding a link. Worth watching what people do live?

[JosephMcArthur]

I'm planning on making a simple explanation gif with all the Github things we want to see. I can include this practice there!

[JosephMcArthur]

Somewhere someone (@npscience or @rchampieux??) asked why there is a delay on getting the instructions for posting after submitting the form & if there is moderation required why not just remove stuff after posting. I just wanted to respond to that quickly!

We did discuss this, and it's likely it could be workable. However, in general, we find that the levels of spam / off topic (even well-meaning) discussions that get caught on our mailing list & collaborate moderation justifies the hurdle here. As the do-a-thon will hopefully be highly visible, this level may even increase (it tends to).

However, in this round of testing the moderation system broke. Usually, for anyone in the room, and who's scored well in their application or engaged with us deeply in the past, they'll get the email instantly. We're still trying to understand why it broke and may have to revert to a simpler system (if in room, send instantly, if not, don't) but we're trying to avoid that for lots of reasons.

We opted for submitting these through a gform as it allows us to make it non-techy friendly and have another point for instructions / help etc.

[npscience]

Thanks Joe, I said something about the form being a blocker but removed the comment after thinking a bit more. Good to hear the explanation! :smile:

On 24 Oct 2017, at 19:49, Joseph McArthur notifications@github.com wrote:

Somewhere someone (@npscience or @rchampieux??) asked why there is a delay on getting the instructions for posting after submitting the form & if there is moderation required why not just remove stuff after posting. I just wanted to respond to that quickly!

We did discuss this, and it's likely it could be workable. However, in general, we find that the levels of spam / off topic (even well-meaning) discussions that get caught on our mailing list & collaborate moderation justifies the hurdle here. As the do-a-thon will hopefully be highly visible, this level may even increase (it tends to).

However, in this round of testing the moderation system broke. Usually, for anyone in the room, and who's scored well in their application or engaged with us deeply in the past, they'll get the email instantly. We're still trying to understand why it broke and may have to revert to a simpler system (if in room, send instantly, if not, don't) but we're trying to avoid that for lots of reasons.

We opted for submitting these through a gform as it allows us to make it non-techy friendly and have another point for instructions / help etc.

— You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or mute the thread.

[bradyyano]

Hi both,

Just a couple of suggestions

• [x] It's really hard to know that 'here' is a hyperlink in this sentence "See the full list of challenges your fellow community members have put forward here." on this page https://sparcopen.github.io/doathon-dev/challenge.html . While it is underlined when you copy and paste the text, it is not appearing as such on my end.

• [ ] Under steps for submitting a challenge, #1 mentions guidelines. Are we able to link to said guidelines? Same page https://sparcopen.github.io/doathon-dev/challenge.html

• [x] It doesn't look like this challenge "How might we create offline Open Educational Resources that can be used and adopted in regions without steady internet connection?" is being discovered by the Open Education issue area explore button https://github.com/sparcopen/doathon/issues?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=is%3Aissue%20is%3Aopen%20%23OpenEducation

Will keep poking around. Hopefully this is helpful?

[katerinadima]

Hey guys,

Just submitted a challenge (both in actuality and to review the process).

In all honesty, I didn't encounter any bags or glitches - except for when you load a page, there is a weird interface appearing in between the change.

• I would like to echo the above comment on the guidelines!

• [x] It could be helpful if, when you select an issue from page https://sparcopen.github.io/doathon-dev/participate.html#issue it opens a different window rather than the same one so that people can simultaneously look at different ones.

• [x] This could be just me, but the github page once you click on the issue seems a bit overwhelming. Github might be a platform most people are not used to but at the same time, I'm not sure how it could be more user-friendly. Again, most likely I need to get the hang of this!

Joe: Issues page still feels overwhelming, how can we help?

From my side, this seems like an amazing idea and I can't wait to see the outcomes. Very well thought out, very well organized and just, bravo!

I am sorry I didn't have more valuable input, will read more thoroughly again!

[guichactis]

Hi everyone! Sorry for the delay @lorrainechu3n and @JosephMcArthur , specially since you've worked so hard on this. First of all, at firts glance it looks amazing!. But going through it as a not native English speaker, I find there's a lot of text and it can be hard to keep up with all of the instructions.

1. Challenge section

• I support the comments on the guidelines, are there any?.
• [x] When you follow the link to submitted challenges, there's a spelling error in de LatAm browsing section (Exploer instead of Explore).
• I feel the information on Design Thinking tools is nor necessary in this section, maybe keep it as bottom in the top, something like Resources?

2.Participate section

• [x] I find the How to contribute section really helpful being a complete amateur on Github, but I feel it overloads the section, and could discourage the participant's browsing activity...

Joe: Consider if we make a how to github page in the footer

3. Project section

Are we considering the possibility of submitting projects that could need help, but for which we're not responsible? If so, could there be an option for indicating so at the google form?

[InquisitiveVi]

Hi everyone, I'm joining here a bit late. Thank you @lorrainechu3n and @JosephMcArthur: the landing page is very informative. I tested Google form submissions.

• [x] ''What region is your project based '' question in both project and challenge submission forms doesn't allow multiple selection, however the text above reads, check all that apply.

[JosephMcArthur]

Hey folks, just wanted to say thank you AGAIN for jumping in and all your great feedback.

In the last 12 hours @lorrainechu3n and I have made as much of your feedback into a todo list on here, and started to tick it off as far as we can with changes in response.

[JosephMcArthur]

THANK YOU 💯 🥇 👍 to everyone for their feedback here. We're going to shut now, as we're trying to make sure we're focusing on issues that need urgent work in the final hours.

Please drop us emails with more feedback, or grab us in person, when / if you have it.