Well. The 'formal' part of the the DC Hack Weekend is done. Many have returned to their families. So, what was it like?
Pretty good. You should have been there. Serge took the initiative to hold the first OSM Hack Weekend in the US. He had contributors attend from the DC area, and several surrounding states, as well as others who travelled from afar. Thanks so much to him. Andrew provided a great venue, and plenty of coffee to keep the coders fuelled. We had just a few too many people for the big room on Saturday at one point and we also had plenty of breakout rooms. I think it speaks to the quality of the event that we had available space to spread out, but nobody wanted to do that; we chose to stay in the big group rather than risk missing anything. And thanks to all of the attendees. I enjoyed meeting some faces to go with the names and 'nicks' I know from email and irc. Several others were meeting for the first time as well. So what, specifically happened? More of that will come out over the next little while. I'm sure others will talk about the details of their code and projects. In general terms here is what I say at various times. The schedule was deliberately loose. It was planned, based on the successful London Hack Weekend model, to be open to serendipity. A sort of technical Petri dish, where things can grow. At various times, these are the types of things I observed: - participants sharing, discussing, advising and admiring. - a group discussion about a "big picture" thing to do with a portion of the OSM web site. - participants posed around a laptop to observe a demonstration or answer a question. - an individual talking about an idea to a group. - peer coaching on languages / environments. - distinct small groups working on collective projects. - gathering consensus on what to have for lunch. - sequenced orders to various lunch spots. - periods of silent independent productivity. - things mocked-up; things demonstrated, things committed to VCS. I had a couple of things in mind to keep myself busy at the Hack Weekend. Stats and shields. I did get something done with stats, but less than I had hoped. I don't feel cheated by that; in place of independent work I was able to enjoy the group participation. I didn't 'do' anything with highway shields but I did talk about them and a couple of other participants took an interest and actually did something with them. I'm really excited about that. And then, with time running out on Sunday, another participant reminded my of the golf rendering layer I did a while ago. So I messed with that a bit too. Now, after a full weekend of OSM-related technical stuff, I feel inspired to do even more OSM-related technical stuff. And I feel that I have stronger connections with some of the other participants and learned things from them that will help me to do more than I could have done had I not attended. Best regards, Richard _______________________________________________ dev mailing list dev@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/dev
