Hello everybody, 3 weeks ago we had our 1st IRC meeting about the next KohaCon in India. It seems I've been selected to start the discussion about the Hackfest ! We've had 3 KohaCon already : one in France (2006) one in USA (2009), one in NZ (2010). In Marseille, it lasted one week and was mostly about hacking. In USA it lasted 3 days, we had one day (and a half ?) teaching new developers how to hack, then one day hacking In NZ it lasted 3 days too. the 1st day was dedicated to some -technical- lightning talks (http://www.kohacon10.org.nz/2010/hackfest/index.html), then teaching new hackers, then doing a few hacking What should be the hackfest in India then ? We have two goals during those meetings: welcome new developers, and do some real hacking: it's very efficient to work in the same room and without clock/time differences ! I proposed during the first IRC meeting to split the hackfest in 2 sub-parts, each of them dealing with one goal: * Hackfest part 1 = "become a Koha developper" * Hackfest part 2 = "do some hacking". We could say part1 is about theory, and part2 is about practising what we've learned on part1 ;-) (and of course, ppl coming for part1 would/should/could stay for part2 !) The 1st part would be dedicated to teaching Koha to ppl wanting to know how to join: things like using git, Koha source code organisation, Koha database, working with templates, dealing with translations, submitting patches. kmkale suggested to have 2 days for this part, just before sunday (that would be a day-off) The 2nd part would be dedicated to hacking: showing what is underway, showing POC if applicable (Proof of Concept), playing with bugzilla, writing unit tests,... How long could/should it last ? There are 2 opinions here: - staying & taking time is expensive, so not too long - once you're here, we must make the trip worth, so as long as possible What's your opinion on this matter ? Mine is that once we're here, we must stay as long as possible, those meetings are precious. So how long should this part last ? kmkale said there will be a room available for us for as long as we want. My proposition would be to say 3 days (mon-wed): not too short, we will be able to do useful things, not too long, we'll be back home on tuesday, before or for the next week-end, back to work next monday. What's your opinion on those ideas ? anything to add ? Feel free to give your opinion, nothing has been decided yet ! -- Paul POULAIN http://www.biblibre.com Expert en Logiciels Libres pour l'info-doc Tel : (33) 4 91 81 35 08