Re: [Snowy] Snowy Hackfest Proposal

[Jeff Schroeder <jschroeder gnome org>]

On Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 9:30 AM, Paul Cutler <pcutler gnome org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'd like to propose a Snowy Hackfest. I've talked to a few people
> privately, but anyone can propose a hackfest folllowing the New Hackfest
> guidelines.[1]
>
> So what I need help with:
>
> 1. Who wants to help organize this with me?
> 2. When do we want to have it?  I've talked to Sandy and Brad, and we
> were all thinking of a short hackfest over a weekend in October (this
> will be tight from a timeline schedule to organize)  This would be a
> Friday night, Saturday and Sunday, fly out late Sunday, if possible.
> 3. Who wants to come?!

I could host 1 person in our office no problem and another on our
super-comfy couch if necessary. It is a great neighborhood with ample
street parking. But, that means Los Angeles.

> 4. Where?  Some of our core contributors are in Boston, Los Angeles, Las
> Vegas and a couple in Europe!  I think understanding #3 better will help
> answer this question.  I can understand the challenge for someone from
> Europe only coming for a weekend.
> 5. Probably most important, what are our goals?  What features do we
> want to try and tackle?

+1 for somewhere on the west coast or at the Boston Summit.

> Once we understand #3 and #4 we have to share a funding request - we'll
> need a rough idea of flight costs, hotel costs (need to find a hotel!)
> and potential venue costs.  If the hackfest is just a small group of
> people (3-5) we could potentially get a suite at a hotel and just use
> that.  If it's more, maybe a hotel conference room, or have a sponsor
> help with space (this may be a challenge of hosting a hackfest over a
> weekend).
>
> So what I need ASAP is interest if you can come and what you want to
> work on (or have the knowledge to work on).  We need Python and Django
> hackers and maybe a designer would be nice.  Let's figure out our goals
> and take it from there.

I'd like to work on whatever is required for releasing tomboy online
as a public beta. As you all probably already know. I bring a small
amount of python, django, and jQuery experience to the table. With
jQuery it is easy to make ugly interfaces flashy, hiding the fact that
they are still ugly :)

Releasing Tomboy Online 1.0 requires:
    - Some css / template love
    - Banging out any openid bugs that we see in the error logs
    - Properly fixing the innodb issues as snowy requires working transactions

I was thinking of initially making snowy a "read only tomboy note
syncing / viewing / sharing platform". That keeps the feature set
small and makes the release goal very attainable. Scope creep will
bite us hard if we add too many ponies at first. After beta (and maybe
pre-1.0) we can work on enabling the funcooker by default and editing
notes from the webui, encryption, etc.

These are solely my own opinions.

-- 
Jeff Schroeder

Don't drink and derive, alcohol and analysis don't mix.
http://www.digitalprognosis.com