Announcing the (first) Global Virtual Hack-a-thon 2019

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Those of you who attended Alfresco DevCon in Edinburgh at the end of January might remember that Kristen Gastaldo‌ brought up the idea of doing more than just one Alfresco Global Virtual Hack-a-thon per year in the "Collaborate with Alfresco" session. And as is more than just obvious from the title of this post, I am pleased to announce the first of two Global Virtual Hack-a-thons we are planning on doing this year. As per feedback from the community, we have chosen Friday, May 10th, 2019, as the date for the event.

The TL;DR on Global Virtual Hack-a-thons

The Alfresco community is ever changing - long-term members may be moving on to other opportunities while new developers / users, drawn maybe by some of the newer products and technologies introduced into the Alfresco ecosystem, re-fill the ranks. So as always, a short introduction of what a Global Virtual Hack-a-thon is seems to be in order.

Alfresco Global Virtual Hack-a-thons are open to everyone in the Alfresco community. While there typically is a large percentage of attendees who are developers, we also like to see end-users, managers and other people interested in Alfresco and its ecosystem of products (Content Services, Process Services, Governance Services, Application Development Framework, Digital Workspace, Activiti Cloud etc.). The projects being worked on during the event can also focus on any kind of technical to non-technical topic, such as enhancing documentation or defining business requirements for critically missing feaures to be discussed / passed on to Alfresco. The more technical people in the event also welcome the opportunity to be exposed to different perspectives on the way Alfresco can be used to solve problems, or to get constructive feedback on the projects they are working on at the event.

Attending an Alfresco Global Virtual Hack-a-thon should also not be hindered by your specific location or time zone. With no specific city / locality where the hack-a-thon takes place, people use various digital tools to connect and collaborate on a global scale, e.g. by using Discord, IRC, Zoom or Skype web sessions. The event typically lasts between 24 and 27 hours (best was around 30) using the follow the sun principle. We start early in the morning for attendees in Oceania and East Asia and go on until ideally the last people in the Americas stop to work on their projects. Anyone can join and leave at any time of the day whichever fits best their schedule.

Project Ideas

As always, we are using a document in this space to list and coordinate project ideas for the Global Virtual Hack-a-thon in advance of the event. Everyone with a specific idea is free to list it on this page, even if they may not be able to attend the event themselves. Other interested parties can add their names to the ideas, and use comments or other communication means to discuss and refine those ideas further. On the day of the event, this also helps to point any new participants who may not have an idea about what to do yet to projects already in progress or waiting to be picked up.

WIth a month to go until the event, I want to invite everyone in the community to start thinking about what you would consider useful things / ideas to be work on / enhanced. Ideally, we have a list of a half a dozen or more ideas until the week before the event, when people can start to more specifically prepare for the projects they want to work on, e.g. get familiar with existing code if continueing an existing project or simply just coordinating who will join at what time in their teams.

Hacker Rooms

Though the Global Virtual Hack-a-thon is intended as a decentralised event, it also presents a good opportunity to get together and socialize in person, especially in regions where there is a concentration of community members. As part of the inaugural Global Virtual Hack-a-thon 2014, members of the community and Alfresco staff organised "hacker rooms" in Brussels, Sydney, Maidenhead, Atlanta and San Mateo. Local communities that want to organise similar hacker rooms for this year's event may contact the Alfresco community team to discuss how Alfresco could support these local rooms, e.g. by helping with catering or simply providing some swag. Please also list/announce your hacker rooms so other people in your region can get in contact with you to potentially join your local team.

Questions

Any questions about the hack-a-thon can be directed to myself or Ole Hejlskov‌. Any inquiries regarding support for hosting local hacker room, i.e. with regards to goodies / swag, should be directed to Ole or the community team in general (community@alfresco.com).