On October 24th, the OGGM team will organize its very first hack day on the campuses of the universities of Bremen and Innsbruck.
Although the motivation originates from the OGGM project, we welcome anyone interested in contributing to an open-source project on that day! We would like to keep the event very open, especially for those who have less experience with open-source development. The only thing you need is to feel enthusiastic about a full day of coding!
This page is a quick introduction to code sprints for the non-expert.
We’ve also prepared a list of possible topics for inspiration!
What is a sprint?
From the internet: “It’s a number of developers - programmers, designers, documentation writers - together in a room, talking to each other, or sitting at their computers, working on their own, or in pairs, or discussing problems in groups. Typically, you’ll select a github issue (representing a bug, or an improvement that needs to be made) from the project’s issue tracker, and get to work on that. As you work, you might want to check with a more experienced coder whether you’re going about it the right way and get feedback on what you’re doing.”
Why organizing a sprint?
The difference to a “normal work day” is multiple:
- The fact to work in the same room and in a relaxed atmosphere with food & drinks makes work nicer and more productive
- One can ask questions more often
- You usually tackle problems that you don’t find time to tackle in a regular work day -> the development is quicker and more efficient
- Sometimes, less care given in the details: you try to make a big step in one direction and fine tune the details in the days after the sprint (it’s less true for documentation sprints, where details are kind of important)
How does this work?
We’ll organize a room in Innsbruck Uni and in Bremen. OGGM e.V. will take care for the catering (pizzas, cookies, fruits, drinks…).
The sprint will need some preparation: mostly decide before the event what pressing issues need to be worked on, and who wants to do what. Here you can choose to work on issues in an open-source project’s tracker or work on your own development goals. We’ve also prepared a list of possible topics for inspiration! It’s always a good idea to make contact with the project maintainers via the issue tracker before working on a topic.
If you want to work on OGGM: for the first event, I would be very keen in improving the documentation and examples and make it the “theme” of the day, but I would like to let you free to decide upon your own goals!
The event can also be used to learn about OGGM and/or GitHub workflows! Some people with experience in OGGM and Github will be around.
Do I need to be an expert to participate?
No! That’s the great part about it: everyone can set his/her own goals and even small changes in the documentation of an open-source project are very useful. It is a day of open-source celebration: do what you want with it!
What is hacktoberfest?
https://hacktoberfest.digitalocean.com/
If you want, you can try to win a T-Shirt ;-)
When and where?
We will start at 08H in the morning, have breakfast together, and then make it open end. There will be catering during the day (generously paid for by OGGM e.V.!).
The rooms will be announced via a separate e-mail.