X-Git-Url: https://sipb.mit.edu/gitweb.cgi/wiki.git/blobdiff_plain/2fe7871d233de1e0e8389d13711f2413fb516467..09dbb5f32f9845b266e83824ce658897f1e0f04b:/runninghackathons.mdwn diff --git a/runninghackathons.mdwn b/runninghackathons.mdwn index 0e92340..637ec40 100644 --- a/runninghackathons.mdwn +++ b/runninghackathons.mdwn @@ -12,7 +12,7 @@ Announce the hackathon at the SIPB meetings coming up to it. Send out an email to sipb-announce@mit.edu, mentioning date, time, place, name, etc. Sound excited and enthusiastic. Add a "tl;dr" for -lazy people. +lazy people. They traditionally start 1pm and go until 11pm or so. Any earlier and people don't wake up early enough and the office is lonely. Create a Facebook event. You probably want to be an administrator of the SIPB Facebook group for this. @@ -28,7 +28,8 @@ Send a reminder email the day before. Expenses: ========= -SIPB allocates $150 to a hackathon. Most of this should be used on +SIPB allocates $150 to a hackathon (assuming approval of the vice-chair). +Most of this should be used on food (see below). If you have extra money, you can be creative. For Hackasaurus Rex and Velocihacker, we purchased prizes off of ThinkGeek and raffled them off on the hour. It was reasonably popular. @@ -64,6 +65,7 @@ so early that you don't have a good sense of how many people are at the Hackathon and what they want to eat. Probably around 2-3 PM is the best time. +You can in fact order food from Mary Chung's if you have people ready to pick it up. Technical stuff: ================ @@ -113,7 +115,9 @@ Note that the wiki has no "create page" button, and there is no "edit" button on pages that don't exist. To create a new page, go directly to - https://sipb.mit.edu:444/ikiwiki.cgi?do=edit&page= + http://sipb.mit.edu/ + +and click on the question mark. To add a redirect on a page, the wiki code you want is @@ -123,7 +127,7 @@ Zephyr: ------- Encourage discussion on zephyr, either on -c sipb or --c . +-c $HACKATHON_NAME. Don't spend a bunch of time trying to get people set up on zephyr. Consider asking Matt Goldstien (austein) to set up a gateway from a zephyr class (not -c sipb) to an AIM gateway. Social stuff: @@ -141,6 +145,18 @@ entertained. It is very easy, especially near the end, for SIPB regulars to get into a niche and for new people to feel excluded. Try to make sure that that doesn't happen. +Projects: +========= + +Someone should try to help people find projects they are interested in. +One way to do this is to have enthusiastic happy person who knows whats going on at the door greeting people, asking what their interested are and routing them to the people leading those projects. + +It is also useful to have tasks listed on the whiteboard, with the language noted. This helps the greeter describe and point people at relevant projects. This requires that someone within each project to take time and sit down figuring out tasks. + +The goal of getting people working on projects is not so much to get work done, but to make the newcomer feel that SIPB is a place they can be successful and have fun hacking. The thing to avoid is someone who just doesn't know what they are doing sitting in a corner banging their head against something and ultimately giving up in frustration. This is difficult though because someone who is new won't really know what questions to ask and might be shy about asking them. + +Setting people up in pairs seems to be useful, as they will already be asking each other questions. Also if one person is stuck, they might just be self-conscious about it and quietly give up. If two people are stuck, they might be more likely to ask for help. + Afterwards: ===========