Serge - You're not doing yourself justice as initiator and organizer of what are the first sprint days at a US State of the Map. I actually think the sprint days went very well - we had amazing turn out for both days and great work happened. So: I see absolutely no need to feel badly and thank you for pushing on making them happen.
I agree there is room for improvement. Aside from clearer comms, the biggest challenge is a great venue that has great internet, is accessible, allows for being all in the same general space while breaking out into groups. All within budget :) We know what's needed here, looking forward to nailing this next year. I also like the idea of lightning talks for next year's conference. On Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 5:00 PM, Serge Wroclawski <[email protected]> wrote: > Frederik, > > Thank you for this valuable feedback, in particular regarding the sprints. > > I feel very badly about how the sprints went, and I want to go into > detail why, and what I'm going to try to do next year about them. > > First, I want to say that for those people who were calling this a > "hack day", I don't blame you, for two reasons, but that I hope this > changes in the future. > > 1. OSM does not have institutional experience with sprints > > It was evident to me that many OSMers were interested in the sprints, > but had only attendeded hack days, so to them, the terms were > synonymous. They are not. > > A sprint is far more organized, more like BoF sessions going on, each > with their own space. Imagine if a conference tried to have every BoF > going on simultaneously in one space at the same time. This wouldn't > work, and so what we had at the event was the equivalent. > > 2. There were not sufficient resources were not put into the sprints > > Running sprints is expensive. It requires multiple rooms, or a very > large room with lots of room for groups to work independently of one > another, out of each others way > > In addition, I had expected that we would have a session for > lightening talks, as we'd had in previous years. Lightening talks are > key to getting sprints going, as it gives the opportunity for sprint > organizers to talk about their project and lay out the goals for the > sprints (which are very result-oriented). > > It was a surprise to me that we didn't have lightening talks, and by > the time I found out, it was too late to change the situation, and so > there wasn't any coordinated efforts around the sprints. > > Lastly, the number of days we were sprinting changed from two, to one, > back to two, and the information about the sprints changed on the > website. This lead to a lot of confusion in folks' mind. > > > The feedback I received has been very positive on this topic, though, > with more developers coming together than we had ever had before at a > single OSM event (roughly 10% of attendees attended one or both sprint > days). There is clear willingness by the community to work on > challenging technical issues. > > I am hopeful that given the amount of interest, that sprints will be > featured next year, and will be given proper resources. In addition, > we should re-introduce the lightening talks, and bring up the sprints, > and sprint coordination, at the opening ceremony, and again at a > closing ceremony (which we also didn't have this year). > > > I'll be doing my best to make sure this happens next year so that we > move towards a more successful sprint in 2014. > > - Serge > > _______________________________________________ > Talk-us mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us >
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