Projects¶
This section contains everything you need to know about hackweek projects:
What are the roles and responsibilities of hackweek project participants?
How to initialize a project within the hackweek Github Organization?
What are the recommended GitHub workflows for managing projects?
Purpose of the projects:¶
During the hackweek we will be facilitating open hacking sessions most of the afternoons. The purpose of these sessions is for you to gain hands-on experience in working together on a well-defined problem.
What is hacking?¶
Hacking is a session of focused, highly collaborative computer programming, in which we create conditions for rapid absorption of new ideas and methods. The word “hack” or “hackathon” has many different interpretations, both positive and negative. Here our intention is to foster the idea of hacking as a fun, interactive and welcoming environment to explore and experiment with computer code.
How will the projects be conducted?¶
Participants are invited to start conversations about projects in the Slack #project_ideas channel.
Early in the hackweek we will guide you in the formation of preliminary teams of (3-7 people) around project ideas.
The next day we will finalize the teams and project roles. Group “Hacking” begins immediately afterwards.
each team will identify:
a project lead, likely the person who pitched the idea, who has knowledge of the datasets and the specific problem to be explored. But roles can be assigned as the group decides to best fit skills and needs.
a data science lead from the pool of hackweek instructors who has expertise in the data tools and methods
once formed, each team will be guided through exercises to help narrow in on a set of tasks that are doable within the hackweek. A brief project outline will be posted to GitHub, following the “Project Guidelines” below.
Throughout the hackweek we will have a daily stand-up meeting to check-in on progress and challenges
On the final day of the hackweek, each team will present their work in a series of lightning talks.
What can I do to prepare in advance?¶
if you have a project idea already brewing, we encourage you to share that with participants on our #project_ideas channel.
feel free to explore various projects and initiate conversations. The goal is to gather as much information as you can to inform your decision about which team to join when we meet in person.
contact a hackweek organizer if you would like assistance in assessing whether a project is well-scoped, or if you need help with a particular dataset.