Coderetreat on November 7th (GDCR20)

[caichinger]

This issue serves the purpose of organizing this year's swkWien GDCR sessions.

Here is a preliminary summary of what need to be discussed and decided (TBD) on and what needs to be done (TODO).

TBD:

• [x] "6th AND 7th" OR "7th only"
• [x] Schedule --> #57
• [x] Local facilitators? --> Yes, see above
• [x] Guests? If there are invited guests, we need a financial ressources No invitations
  • [x] Sponsor? No sponsors
• [x] Conference tooling for remote facilitation, i.e. zoom, jitsi, ... --> #56

TODO:

• [x] Create events on https://www.softwerkskammer.org/activities/
• [x] List on https://www.coderetreat.org/events/
• [ ] Announce on Twitter
• [ ] Spread the word in our respective communities

---

@swkWien/organiser @swkWien/friends please help!

[caichinger]

From my side:

• I can help with organizing and suggest ideas.
• I cannot help with getting a sponsor.
• At the last code retreat, I liked the centrally organized (zoom) breakout sessions as they facilitated smoothly switching between different contexts (entire group vs small teams).
• Once the tooling is agreed on, we need to communicate our choice as well to make sure every participant has the required software already installed. I would not expect participants to manage ad hoc sessions as this will likely cause confusion about who is doing what (or responsible for).

[dertseha]

Re tooling: At least Zoom appears to need a specific license to allow breakout rooms with screen sharing and remote control (correct?) A side thought I had: What if we created 10 Google meetings in parallel, named Room 1..10" and people use those?

As for sponsor: What is there to sponsor? We don't have lunch together. Though, perhaps the tool... Wild idea: The only thing (combining both thoughts about tooling and sponsor) is to use https://gather.town/ (never used it) - with the small downside it does not appear to have remote control.

Which brings me to back to the topic of remote control: What if we also set up one repository on GitHub, with a network of branches prepared, such as session1/team1/main and then hand them out per room. People could then organize quick code handover.

I'm starting to like the idea of gather.town and a prepared repository for all. (For the pricing of gather.town I would pay it myself for the one-time event) -- Although perhaps we should do a small proof-of-concept test run with that...

(and/or I'm overthinking things and we should stick to proven setups)

[caichinger]

Re tooling: At least Zoom appears to need a specific license to allow breakout rooms with screen sharing and remote control (correct?)

Yes, you are correct. Last time, a participant (David Tanzer), jumped in and took care of that. In case we somehow have a professional license, that would be an easy solution. From past experience, I believe remote control is not that important (it is quite slow and you need to be very patient - in my opinion it is easier to either keep the driver or share through e.g. a repo).

A side thought I had: What if we created 10 Google meetings in parallel, named Room 1..10" and people use those?

Should work; not as nice as the breakout sessions but would do it.

As for sponsor: What is there to sponsor? We don't have lunch together. Though, perhaps the tool...

Tool or external facilitator?

Wild idea: The only thing (combining both thoughts about tooling and sponsor) is to use https://gather.town/ (never used it) - with the small downside it does not appear to have remote control.

Looks very cute! (Does this already qualify as a serious response?) :D

Which brings me to back to the topic of remote control: What if we also set up one repository on GitHub, with a network of branches prepared, such as session1/team1/main and then hand them out per room. People could then organize quick code handover.

I'm starting to like the idea of gather.town and a prepared repository for all. (For the pricing of gather.town I would pay it myself for the one-time event) -- Although perhaps we should do a small proof-of-concept test run with that...

(and/or I'm overthinking things and we should stick to proven setups)

I do not know if there is already a proven setup but I believe we should have one ready and tested when the retreat starts. For sharing code I agree on the GitHub repo idea; for retrospectives and eventual discussions Trello worked fine. We can try gather.town to see if it adds value.

[caichinger]

Survey: Please vote by reacting to this comment with

• :tada: if you want this code retreat to be more like a zero overhead CR (ad hoc program/topics).
• :rocket: if you want this code retreat be more like a GDCR (pre-defined program/topic).

[caichinger]

Survey: Please vote by reacting to this comment with

• :smile: if you want a one day retreat on the 7th.
• :eyes: if you want a two day retreat on the 6th and 7th.

[dertseha]

...uhh... how do I put these reactions? The smiley popup shows only 8, none of which is one of your proposed options :) As for overhead: I'm neutral (unless it's about getting gather.town to work ;) - yes, it's cute and to me it underlines the "fun" part of such an event ) And for how many days: I most likely won't be able to join on a Friday.

As for sponsoring and paid facilitator: Ah, thank you, I forgot this point.

[caichinger]

...uhh... how do I put these reactions? The smiley popup shows only 8, none of which is one of your proposed options :)

Ups, sorry. Did not occur to me that reactions could be limited. Thx for pointing that out, fixed the emojis. You can add your vote now.

As for overhead: I'm neutral (unless it's about getting gather.town to work ;) - yes, it's cute and to me it underlines the "fun" part of such an event )

I will send you a mail.

[gregorriegler]

So many questions.

What is the goal of the GDCR? What makes it different from other retreats? What is our goal?

I'm personally totally fine with our ordinary saturday zero overhead coderetreat, and keep on doing what we did so far. But if you want to do something else, like draw more folks and have it more planned out like the traditional GDCRs i'm also fine with that. Or if we want to do both, i'm also fine with that.

Maybe a videocall where we discuss our needs, goals and options for an hour or so would guide us towards a joint action.

[gregorriegler]

When you think of a central git repository for easier code sharing, don't forget about the Idea of throwing away the code after a session, and what this does in terms of psychological safety and shame. We know each other, and for us it's no problem. But for somebody doing this for the first time, having no knowledge on TDD... they'll be shy to begin with. Forcing them to push their code into a central repo they don't own doesn't improve the situation. But we'd rather want them to feel free to experiment, and enjoy themselves.

[gregorriegler]

In my opinion in a remote event with new people that rotate in 50 minute sessions that haven't prepared the tech, Git handovers often don't work very well. Then they have to switch screen sharing which adds friction and is error prone if they don't have the experience. Some sessions might loose half their time to the handovers.

The same IDE tooling might help, such as this new IntelliJ CodeWithMe thingy https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/14896-code-with-me/versions or VS Code liveshare, which i am not familiar with. Or, they are connecting to a shared remote host such as anydesk.

But all of these bring some obstacles, and the "one Driver, no handover" proves to be very effective in such short sessions.

[haraldreingruber]

For online events https://cyber-dojo.org/ works really well because there is no setup required, allows to share code and results instantly, and everyone works on their own machine/browser. Also, it supports most of the popular programming languages/frameworks.

[haraldreingruber]

I have a Zoom Pro license and can offer to host the zoom session.

[codecop]

Hi. I registered the event with SWK and the Coderetreat site (PR pending). I sent mails to Austrian SWK groups and Twitter:

• SWK https://www.softwerkskammer.org/activities/gdcr20-vienna
• Tweet https://twitter.com/swkWien/status/1318989265263595520

Please someone take if from here

[dertseha]

OK, so, gather.town is now off the table then? With a Zoom Link publicly announced and everything...

[codecop]

Sorry forgot about that. Just wanted the registration out so we do not lose time. Still possible, we also need a way to help collaboration, i.e. collect github users etc

[caichinger]

Is there an easy (not confusing) way to make people register in a way that we can contact them beforehand (re-announce and let them register through the SWK site?)?

If it is a small group with the usual regulars, we would need hardly any preparation (and can GDCR be like a zero overhead CR). However, if there are more new people, it makes sense to provide them with a little information about what to expect and what to have prepared beforehand.

Will write again tonight.

[caichinger]

I can offer to coordinate our activities if that is okay for you. Let me know if you have any objections.

[caichinger]

Brief update:

Sorry forgot about that. Just wanted the registration out so we do not lose time. Still possible, we also need a way to help collaboration, i.e. collect github users etc

The original Doodle now asks participants to instead fill out this form http://tiny.cc/GDCRVienna.

Through the form, we ask participants about their email so we can contact them prior to the event and leave more room for us to.

More later

[caichinger]

I hereby assume the role of coordinator.

As mentioned above, registration is now out and we have more time to play around with ideas and specify the setup. There is only one global day of coderetreat each year and it would be nice to make it something special. In particular, we may be able to attract new participants. To this end, there are two new issues which summarize the main inputs from this one:

• GDCR20: Technical Setup #56
• GDCR20: Program, Facilitators #57

At the moment we have arrived at:

• One day event
• Plan for more participants including newcomers (we always fall back to ad hoc), cf #57
• Zoom as fallback if not default, cf #56

[caichinger]

Closing.

Thank you again for making this event possible!