Re: [us-marketing] Hackfest at Ohio Linux Fest

On Fri, Jun 17, 2011 at 5:29 AM, drew <drew@baseanswers.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 2011-06-16 at 08:58 -0700, Carl Symons wrote:
> > On Thu, Jun 16, 2011 at 6:01 AM, drew <drew@baseanswers.com> wrote:
> > > On Wed, 2011-06-15 at 16:01 -0700, Carl Symons wrote:
> > > > What happens at a LibreOffice HackFest?
> > >
> > > Hi Carl,
> > >
> > > Well, when I first approached this I was thinking more of a QA day but
> > > the organizer (and the organizers from SELF who would be interested,
> > > possibly and depending on how it goes in Ohio, for next years SELF)
> > > really wanted to call it and make it a hack fest.
> > >
> > > Basically the idea is to have a number of 'easy hacks' or 'quick fix
> > > bugs' that people could actually code against (for) right there at the
> > > event. This would include help from mentors from the LIbreOffice side.
> > >
> > > For a QA day it would be somewhat different with the goal of helping
> > > people become useful QA contributors - something that is sorely needed
> > > also.
> > >
> > > There is a bit of overlap as to what a mentor would need to help with
> > > between a QA day and a HackFest - on the one hand I feel confident that
> > > I, personally, could handle the QA day but not so for the Hackfest.
> > >
> > > Anyway - that is not a lot of details and I'll try to flesh in those
> > > details, with help from your folks on the list over the next couple of
> > > days.
> > >
> > > Thanks
> > >
> > > Drew
> >
> > This sounds like quite a useful project. Interesting to developers,
> > but would also require guidance from seasoned LibO development people.
>
> 100% agree - there is a little problem there and one I need to address
> directly on a different mailing list, today.
>
> > What skillset would people need to have to be involved? C++, Java, Python?
> >
> > Help improve the leading open source office suite at Ohio LinuxFest.
> > If you are a C++ (and whatever else) programmer and want to help make
> > a big FOSS difference, join the LibreOffice Hackfest. Free pizza and
> > Red Bull.
>
> At the SELF show I was relentless in doing two things with every person
> that stopped and talked:
>
> 1) They got a hand shake from me. Don't laugh that really does mean
> something.
>
> 2) I asked them to help the effort.
>
> The number of people that said they wanted to help somehow was very
> strong, not everyone of course, not even the majority of people, but a
> goodly number - of those many where interested in helping with easy
> hacks or with QA, so now we need to help them start. That is the goal in
> my mind.
>
> Thanks
>
> Drew

I don't think that we were as assertive at LinuxFest Northwest as you describe.

The OHLF Hackfest is proposed for the first day, so there wouldn't be
an opportunity to recruit people to the effort during the Fest. You
wrote before that some coordination would be required. That would have
to happen, somehow, ahead of time. The OHLF organizers would probably
have to help get the word out. And there would have to be LibreOffice
outreach too.

Taking all that into consideration, it still sounds like a great idea.
I ran it by a fellow LinuxFest NW person yesterday...got an
enthusiastic yes response. This is something worth doing. There would
be some improvements to the apps; more importantly, it's an
opportunity to build the stakeholder base and demonstrate the
grassroots-iness.

Carl

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