Cultivating Good Projects

Not every project makes a good hackathon project. It is extremely important to maximize the following qualities in the projects at your event:

• Clearly articulated. Projects should have a clear question or problem they are trying to solve plus a reasonably specific proposed solution.
• Attainable. Most projects will accomplish about 25% of what they think they can accomplish in the limited time they have. Manage each project’s goals so participants are able to feel accomplished at the end of the session, not interrupted.
• Easy to onboard newcomers. Projects should have ready-to-go tasks for newcomers with a variety of skills and at a variety of skill levels. For coding projects, these tasks can’t require an intimate understanding of the code base, and make sure the build environment can be spun up in less than 20 minutes. Make a list of tasks or create github issues ahead of time!
• Led by a stakeholder. A stakeholder (or “subject matter expert”) guides a project to real-world relevance. Projects without a stakeholder can “solve” a problem that doesn’t exist. Ideally the leader (or one of the leaders) is a stakeholder, or a good proxy for a stakeholder. I strongly recommend reviewing Laurenellen McCann’s Build With, Not For series on involving stakeholders in all civic tech work. Additionally, it is never enough for a project leader to just be an ideas person. Beware when the leader is a stakeholder but can’t foresee how he or she might be implementing along with the rest of the team.
• Organized. For projects with four or more members, especially newcomers, the project leader’s role should be to coordinate, ensuring each team member has something to work on and helping to welcome new team members.

Treat these bullets like a checklist. Projects that think about themselves in terms of these qualities tend to be happier and more productive.

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JOIN OUR HACKATHON 

Demo or Presentation at Global Forum ?

Hard to accomplish from Hackathon results. 

***Should Global Forum reflect "call for Developers" 

Hi Bobbi,

Great catching up with you this morning. I've been thinking about the project more and the current state that it's in and got to wondering if a Hyperledger Lab and a hackathon is the right next step. Please don't take this as me trying to dissuade you from pursuing the idea, but just wanted to share a couple of thoughts I had.

I wonder if a Hyperledger Lab is the right place for the Giving Chain. Part of this is up for the TSC to decide, but from my perspective, Hyperledger is about providing enterprises with tools, frameworks, and platforms to solve problems with blockchain. It has several different DLTs and many tools to build blockchain apps. What I don't see under Hyperledger is actual end user apps. If you look at it this way, could another enterprise use the Giving Chain to build their own app? I think the answer is "yes" for nearly all other Hyperledger projects. I'm not sure we could say the same for the Giving Chain though. It's a great app, and it's a great idea! It's just not a platform or tool that other enterprises could use to build their own apps though. Again, this is up to the TSC to decide, but this is a question you may face. I would hate to see the idea go into Labs, not get much traction and just fizzle out there. I think it's helpful to ask, what's the advantage of becoming a Lab, and what is the desired outcome of the Lab? Where does it go after that?

The next thought is really about the stage the project is really at. It seems like we proved the idea last summer. Is there more to prove? What questions are we still trying to answer? Or is what we really want an actually working app/service? A hackathon, (or whatever we decide to call it) to rally some volunteer open source developers together is great for a short burst of productivity on something. But it's likely not going to be able to produce a fully functioning, production grade cloud service that is maintainable in the long run. What will likely happen is that folks may show up, contribute some code, and then disappear again after the hackathon is over. Who will fix bugs as they are discovered later, or add new features, or solve production issues when they impact a running donation project? The conclusion to this thought is the same as above. I would hate to see the project keep going through these cycles of a bit of productivity, and then just to die out until more volunteers come along to prop it back up again.

Going back to your comment about needing to get funding for the project - I think this is spot on. I think if you want the idea to really take off, it's time to move beyond the cycles of finding volunteers to add some code here or there. It may be time to form an actual team and really build a real "product". This isn't a weekend project, or even a couple weeks. There's a lot of work to get from where we're at today to a final product that is ready for individual donors, transporters, and recipients to use. In addition there are going to be real costs associated with building it, but also running it long term.

After further reflection, I don't think that I have the capacity to sponsor this Lab. I love the idea and I dearly want to see it succeed. The amount of work necessary to do so is not something I can balance with my current commitments though. I apologize for having to go back on this, but I got ahead of myself earlier this morning. I am happy to still talk about FireFly and to help with kicking off the hackathon. But FireFly needs a lot of my time right now, especially with the v1.1 release coming up and preparing for Global Forum.

I hope you don't take any of this to be negative criticism of your ideas or plans. Again, I love the idea and want it to succeed, so it's with that desire for success that I wanted to share my thoughts on what may or may not make it successful.

I'm happy to chat about it more in person at some point soon if you want. I hope you have a great weekend!

Thanks,

Nicko

Goal: Us: A working POC for end of Summer events www.thegivingchain.org

1. Backend
2. Frontend (UX)

Task:

What does Giving Chain need to do

Dev Leadership - Run in containers? Your pc or cloud? 

Pitch: Hey last year we did this with GC early POC (watch video here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1PI3k5F-n8)

Product Life Cycle

In cloud

reliable

Prove out functionality

Tasks

Pick a day to record video 8/6

Add daily meetup to calendar

Market

GUIDE:

Hacking is creative problem-solving.

• A hackathon is any event of any duration where people come together to solve problems. Most hackathons I’ve run also have a parallel track for workshops.
• Participants typically form groups of about 2-5 individuals, take out their laptops (if the event is technology themed), and dive into problems.
• Hacking begins with project introductions. Participants that bring projects to the event have an opportunity to briefly (1 minute max) explain what they are working on at the very start of the event so that other participants can join that project. At the end of the event, a wrap-up session gives each project a chance to demonstrate some accomplishments.

Venue & Sponsors:

• Start:  ? End:   ? Plan at least 30 minutes before and after the event
• Sponsors will give you something — cash, space, food, t-shirts — with the expectation that they get something out of their support for your event. They might be recruiting/hiring and are looking to scout out your attendees, or they might be marketing a product that they want to promote.

Find project leaders

Bobbi, Hardik, Nicko?- and others. 

• Guide them on how to make progress on their projects
• Identify what sort of help their project needs

Email attendees / Social Media / Blog

Set up group communication Discord

• Choose a hashtag
• Set up a metaverse space
• Computer Requirements
• Email any journalists you know who may be interested in the event

Email to registered participants. Include:

• Your contact information, including your cell phone number so participants can call/text you if they cannot find the venue
• Start and end dates and times of the event
• Your code of conduct (or a link)
• Any read-ahead materials to prepare them for the topic of the event
• Names of the organizers and acknowledgement/thanks to sponsors

INFORMATION

 Participants:

• Zoom Room info 
• The event’s hashtag and URL
• Discord Channel
• Post Hack a thon schedule

Welcoming session

Start with a brief session welcoming everyone and laying out the day:

• Introduce the organizers
• Thank the  sponsors (do not forget anyone — this is why they sponsored you)
• Explain the history and purpose of the event
• Mention the code of conduct 
• Encourage people to share project on social media / tell the hackathon’s story

All of the participants introduce themselves.

Problem statement, the solution, and the skills/help needed.

Wrap-up

The wrap-up session gives everyone a chance to hear what everyone else worked on during the day. For a small group, ask volunteers to report what they accomplished or what they learned (especially for workshop participants)

• Thank the venue and sponsors
• Thank the attendees and co-organizers
• Discuss Next steps

After the event:

• Write down everything that went right so you can repeat it next time
• Write down everything that went wrong so you can avoid it next time
• Compute how much the event cost in total and per participant, just to know
• Survey the attendees about what they liked and didn’t like
• Blog about the event

...

© Joshua Tauberer 2014-2017. Feel free to use under the terms of CC-BY 4.0.

• Don’t expect to have actually solved a problem by the end of the hackathon