I have been thinking about organizing an OpenMRS Hackathon in Vienna, Austria. Dont have any details, so this topic is more about how to do it (ideas, do’s, dont’s) and to get started
Who: I am thinking of asking a Meetup group (for ex. Java Group or a free code camp group) to organize it with me, so I could get some people to attend and help me with the venue.
When: since I have so many other plans I would target December, so I have some more time to organize it (get jira issues, make a design forum/or dev forum).
What: Another question is of course: on what to work? When looking at https://ci.openmrs.org/sonar/dashboard/index/1865 I thought, why not create a theme for the hackathon like a “Clean up” Christmas party
Im sure it wouldnt be difficult (guess still time intensive) to generate quite an amount of tickets from the Sonar code smells/issues + some classes that definitely need to be tested or refactored. Since I dont know how many people would attend in the end I would rather have way more tickets.
Also I guess it would be good to coordinate so that there are maintainers online at the same time so code can be reviewed and merged. Dont want people to get bored or angry at me
Thank you guys, am looking forward to your feedback!! and help
I plan 1 day as I dont know how much time people would be willing to invest.
And maybe on Saturday 3.12 or 17.12 (not sure if thats to close to christmas for people).
I am at a meetup tonight and will try to talk to the organizer about it. He might already have experience with organizing hackathons and I guess he knows lots of people from the group, so this will give me a better idea. Will post what I learned tomorrow
For further logistics:
I guess people would need an openmrs id, so they can claim tickets.
Do you know how long that takes? Heard that some people where having trouble getting an openmrs id due to errors on the registration page and then later access to jira took a while due to helpdesk times.
@teleivo The OpenMRS Conference Hackathon runs on 10.12 and 11.12, maybe we can join hands somehow as we were planning for remote participation too. Thoughts?
A lot of the comments on that page are more focused on functional tickets, and less on refactoring/code-smell tickets, but do read the first paragraph.
Great idea! I think the 3rd of December might be a tricky date to get support from the OpenMRS developers since most will be about to travel or already traveling to the summit, may be the 17th or as @ssmusoke you can align it with the hackathon in Uganda.
New year, same idea, different place I’m now in Berlin working for ThoughtWorks as a consultant developer and would like to finally organize my first and hopefully more hackathons.
I’ve read the wiki on how to organize one, I have a location and the awesome help of @wolf who has experience in organizing OpenMRS hackathons. We are discussing dates for one day hackathons (maybe end of march & april); will tell you as soon as we agreed on them.
I would like to focus the hackathons on paying back technical debt. I think this way we might be able to mitigate the issue (that was mentioned in the wiki and the related article) that people coming to hackathons often do not know the projects code base or the domain. I want this to be of help to the community!!! and not just take up your time in reading tickets and reviewing pull requests that are not a priority.
@teleivo good to see your post again and congratulations for joining TW!
Dealing with some aspects of our technical debt looks exciting and achievable. Those sonar issues are easier to prepare, work on, and review. So perfect for a one day hackathon.
Labeling the tickets is what i have always seen people do in the past. So you are not alone in this line of thinking.
I created a first ticket https://issues.openmrs.org/browse/TRUNK-5030
and would like to start discussion about whether I should proceed with creating issues like that from the sonar rules. And also if you have tickets you want us to tackle please feel free to label them with ‘hackathon-germany’
I have looked at the ticket and it looks perfect. So yes, go ahead.
Since your date is still far, you are going to have to create a good number of them because am sure some of the GSOC aspirants are going to steal some of them. They are juicy!
Thank you for mentioning this. I wrote that people need to create an OpenMRS ID under a “mandatory pre-hackathon TODOs” section in the wiki. I am creating a meetup event (with link to the wiki) where people will pre-register, where I will also send out a message to the participants maybe two weeks in advance to remind them to create the OpenMRS ID.
When they have created an OpenMRS ID, do they need to create a helpdesk case to get JIRA access? If so can you please point me to the wiki so I can link that into the hackathon wiki instructions. They need JIRA access so they can claim issues.
haha, yes you are probably right
but I wont be sad, since if they complete the tickets they help us anyway
I think its good to have this much advance since its my first one and this way I also dont put to much stress on the ticket reviewers since they have more time.
I would target December, so I have some more time to organize it (get jira issues, make a design forum/or dev forum).
who has experience in organizing OpenMRS hackathons. We are discussing dates for one day hackathons (maybe end of march & april); will tell you as soon as we agreed on them.
but I wont be sad, since if they complete the tickets they help us anyway 
I think its good to have this much advance since its my first one and this way I also dont put to much stress on the ticket reviewers since they have more time.