Re: GUADEC 2016: length and schedule

On Fri, Nov 06, 2015 at 10:09:43AM +0000, Allan Day wrote:
> Alexandre Franke <[email protected]> wrote:
> ...
> >> Fifth, we might want to rethink how the hackfest days are organised,
> >> either in terms of reducing the number of days, or expanding them to
> >> include more than just BoFs.
> >
> > You piqued my interest here. What do you think we could do on those
> > days in addition to BoFs?
> 
> I have a few issues with the BoF days: they aren't very newcomer
> friendly, and if there isn't a BoF you're interested in, there's
> little incentive to participate. I was thinking that it would be good
> to name them "hack days" or something similar: advertise them as
> general days for people to work, and make sure that there's a room
> dedicated to ad hoc hacking.
> 
> And there are other things we could do to make these days more
> inclusive and productive: maybe we could set something up to help
> people organise around particular topics, like a noticeboard where you
> can advertise your interests, or maybe we could have micro-BoFs, or
> areas designated for different types of work, or maybe there could be
> an area for lightning talks on recent or in-progress work (as a kind
> of feedback seminar), or maybe there could be led workshops.

I think having on on-boarding BoF that brought new contributors or
those who are thinking of contributing up to speed with GNOME
contribution might be good. Having a hands-on session where you can
show the workflow and have some examples of beginner friendly tasks
that they can take on during the BoF. This might help in off-loading
some folks in some of the BoFs, for example the one I attended on Rust
was pretty full of seasoned Rust programmers and me and another person
took time from their limited time together just to get up to speed
with the topic. 

Sometimes there are things that we in FOSS take for granted, like
knowledge of git, mailing lists, patch policy, etc. which new
contributors may be intimidated by, reducing the level of intimidation
may provide new contributors.

Best,

Jeremiah