Re: Hackathon (was: Re: The Friday Experiment)

["Charles Eckel (eckelcu)" <eckelcu@xxxxxxxxx>]

Thanks for the feedback on the hackathon. I commented on the competition part in another thread.

 

As for finding a team and project presentations, we did away with the project specific presentations/pitches at the beginning of the hackathon and replaced with the use of the wiki. This reduced the amount of time spent at the beginning of the hackathon considerably. At IETF 102 and 103, we announced each time and had them raise their hand to show where they were. This took a few minutes at most. Are you saying this is not helpful?

 

The entire kickoff presentation took roughly 15 minutes. For many people, this was probably not a great use of their time. However, keep in mind that we had 80 people at the hackathon for whom this was their first IETF meeting, and over 120 for which this was their first IETF hackathon. I hope and expect it was a helpful for them.

 

At the end of the hackathon, we had 3-minute presentations by all teams that wished to share a summary of what they did. This is entirely optional, yet most teams chose to do it. It took about 90 minutes, which is admittedly a long time. At IETF 101, I proposed not having these presentations, but when I polled the room the vast majority of participants raised their hands in favor of having them. These presentations are a way to record and share what was accomplished and learned at the hackathon. I believe this is valuable, even if not every presentation is of interest to everyone in attendance.

 

Cheers,

Charles

 

From: ietf <ietf-bounces@xxxxxxxx> on behalf of Eric Rescorla <ekr@xxxxxxxx>
Date: Tuesday, November 13, 2018 at 6:30 AM
To: Jana Iyengar <jri.ietf@xxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Paul Wouters <paul@xxxxxxxxx>, "ietf@xxxxxxxx" <ietf@xxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: Hackathon (was: Re: The Friday Experiment)

 

+1 on the presentations and competition aspect. I also don't think we need the "here is how to find a team" stuff....

 

-Ekr

 

 

On Mon, Nov 12, 2018 at 10:55 PM Jana Iyengar <jri.ietf@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

+1 to let's not do presentations at the end of the hackathon.  If we want to thank sponsors, there could be a no-audio presentation that runs in a loop for a couple of hours on Sunday afternoon.

I will take a moment to thank the organizers for the excellent arrangements in Bangkok.  The meals/snacks/drinks options alone were spectacular.

 

On Tue, Nov 13, 2018 at 1:49 PM Martin Thomson <martin.thomson@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Tue, Nov 13, 2018 at 5:38 PM Lars Eggert <lars@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On 2018-11-13, at 4:49, Ted Lemon <mellon@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Yup. The announcements in general are pretty distracting.
>
> Fully agreed. Basically, they kill over an hour of otherwise productive time.

Same.  I appreciate that it is necessary to thank sponsors and the
like, but these overheads could be greatly reduced or eliminated.

Why can't they all be like the Cisco host talk at the plenary?