On 2/4/07, Brion Vibber <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > We'd like to have the techs a little more involved in Hacking Days > planning than last year; Ivan did a fantastic job at arranging a > tech-themed mini-conference, but it wasn't really what we expected and I > think it ended up less productive and more stressful and hectic than it > should have been because of that. > > Who should we be talking to on the program committee or whatever to make > sure everybody's on the same page? I want everybody to both have a blast > and get some stuff done at the same time. :)
Both excellent goals! As far as I could tell, there were three general feelings about hacking days/tech talks last year. One was that hacking days was overscheduled. Another was that there weren't enough good tech talks in the main program (a lot of them got pushed off to hacking days; we also didn't get many submissions in comparison with everything else). The next was that there's a conflict in hacking days between the core devs needing to have a meeting with each other, and the wider development community getting together to talk about mediawiki. In turn, Ivan planned hacking days last year partly in response to feedback that hacking days was *too* unplanned & a little chaotic in 2005. Here's some ideas for trying to remedy these issues and striking a good balance: a) have more excellent formal technical talks and panels in the main program -- but this means that all of you interested in the subject will have to *submit* talks :) (the cfp will be open soon, hopefully). b) if the core developers want to plan a closed, invite-only meeting, they should be able to do so before or after the main conference (getting in touch with the accomodation/registration coordinator would probably be a good idea for timing issues) but this wouldn't be the same thing as a general hacking days. c) we need good ideas in how to integrate ideas from the tech talks, the more limited meeting, and those with interest in hacking mediawiki into a smaller, more open hacking days. As Jakob says, we haven't talked about this in the program committee formally yet (and I don't know b6s's plans so far), but I personally think rethinking hacking days & getting some of the core mediawiki techs involved (every year!) is a great idea. -- phoebe _______________________________________________ Wikimania-l mailing list [email protected] http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
