Our Will’s World project is soon coming to an end. While we are busy populating the Shakespeare Registry with great data, we are keen to put this wonderful resource to good use. How can we achieve this in an unusual and fun way?
How about an online hack event!
The idea first came to us as we began planning a traditional hack event – something in person, overnight, possibly featuring pizza. As we started looking at how this would work best we realised there were lots of logistical issues to deal with from finding a suitable venue, to catering to the issue of how participants could find the time to travel and take part.
We also started to think about things that don’t always work so well in in-person hack days… sometimes the software you want to use is sitting on a machine you don’t have with you, sometimes you need to attend to caring responsibilities which just don’t fit into a 24 hour marathon lockdown, and sometimes you just can’t move that meeting or spare the travel time to fly miles away to make that fantastic looking hack day somewhere at the other end of the country.
And that’s when we realised that an online hack event might not only resolve our logistical issues but that the flexibility and potential benefits of an online hack event are also very exciting!
More people can participate:
Enable use of familiar tools:
Flexibility in participation:
Promote use of social media technologies:
Obviously, the critical issue will be to ensure that communication takes place effectively during the hack between people scattered in various locations. Team formation will be interesting – but no weirder than grabbing a coke or a beer and introducing yourself around a room of fellow hackers. And we know that interruptions could be tricky for some participants since they will be occupied with the Will’s World hack from their normal office or home desk. We can see challenges here but we think the benefits could make this a great format for our hack event.
But we want to know what YOU think of the idea…
We have come up with a few scenarios on how this type of online hack could work. We would really appreciate your help in evaluating different formats and communication tools for this event. Please take a moment to tells us what you think and provide us with your feedback by taking this short survey:
https://www.survey.ed.ac.uk/willsworldhack/
Please do feel free to share that survey link with others you think might be interested in this event. We also welcome any comments here as well.
One last thing, we are aiming for the online hack to take place during the first week of December. Put it in your diary!
This is just a wee update to say that the hack will be going ahead! See this post for all the details of the Will’s World Hack Wiki and the registration form for the event:
http://willsworld.blogs.edina.ac.uk/2012/11/22/join-wills-world-online-hack-5-12-dec-2012/