globaldev Hack Day Proposal

A hackday is best described as an intense piece of research and development resulting in software prototypes built over the course of one or two days. During the globaldev hack day, participants have one day to work individually or in teams to produce a hack centred around the WLD platform, ecosystem or business. Although traditionally the realm of developers, we want this hack day to be accessible to everyone within globaldev: developers, UX, QA, PMs, operations, even the TD! Participants are encouranged to form small teams to work together on a hack. Of course, individuals are more than welcome to work on their own should they so wish.

Benefits of a Hack Day

Hack Days are
a brilliant way to discover new ideas: developers are always coming up with ideas on how to improve the platform, or to streamline the development process, or to reuse data were already collecting; most of the time we dont have the time to explore all of these ideas, so a hack day is a great way to give people the freedom to come up with the next profit-increasing project. awesome for PR: blog posts and photos can be published throughout the day, and once the event is over; lightning talks at the end of the day can be filmed and published; projects written can be released as open source. a great morale booster for the participants: they get to work on something new and novel, doing something thats outside their normal work; they also get to work with people they may not normally work with, increasing paths of communications throughout the team; participants can also be inspired by the hacks that other people come up with. a wonderful way to learn: by working on something outside the realm of regular platform work participants get to broaden their knowledge of new technologies, other programming languages, different paradigms. Whats learned can be channelled back into their regular work in terms of a better understanding of what theyre doing, or new insight on why things need to be done in a particular way.

Hack Days are not

an excuse to have a lazy day in the office: everyone is expected to join in and build or make something that can be presented at the end of the day. going to produce finished products: everythings done in a day, so you cant expect things to be production ready in that time. guaranteed to come up with the next 1m idea: theres absolutely no guarantee that a hack will lead on to a huge revenue earner, but the lessons learned and the inspiration imparted through the process will help improve communication, technology understanding and idea generation throughout the team.

For the participants, a hack day is a challenge: build something given severe time constraints, but with the freedom that what is built can come from their own imagination and desire. Most participants will leave a hack day with new knowledge and a renewed vigour for development, that can lead to extending their ability to deliver results during the regular 95.

Schedule for the Day

Time 8:30am 9:00am 9:15am 9:30am 12:30pm 4:30pm 5:30pm 6:00pm Event Participants arrive and have breakfast Welcome to the hack day talk Inspiring talk on something inspiring Hacking begins! Lunch arrives, hacking continues Lighting talks Panel deliberation, beer oclock Prize giving and closing words

Lightning Talks, Awards and Prizes

The hack day is primarily a learning experience, but it should also be about getting something done in a short period of time. At the end of the day, all participants must give a two-minute lightning talk to present their hack to the other participants, and a judging panel made up of non-participants. Once all talks are over, the judging panel will decide upon a number of categories for which the winning participant(s) will recieve a small prize:
Best In Show: the best overall hack of the day, judged on creativity, technical skill, usefulness and coolness Most Innovative Hack: the most creative and innovative hack Most Promising Hack: the hack that holds the most promise for something that could be taken forward by the business Most Complete Hack: the most feature-complete and polished hack Most Pointless Hack: theres always one Peoples Choice Award: voted by the other participants

Prizes should be small, but enough to reward the participants for the work they have put in throughout the day. As a single prize-winning hack may have been built by more than one participant, the prize should be easily shareable.

Hack Ideas
The following is a list of ideas for hacks. Note that these are ideas, and participants are free (and encouraged) to come up with their own suggestions.
Processing private message text to find trends in topics and phrases that people use that result in responses (and those that dont!) Developing a new way of processing, storing and retrieving member activity data. A browser plugin or toolbar for looking up member details. A visualisation of member activity over a day. An Arduino hardware hack that shows the number of members currently online on an analogue guage. A way of simulating live traffic data in the WLD application. Running profile text and private messages through a spam filter to detect potential scammers. Developing a way of fingerprinting photos to allow easier catching of photos that are reused by scammers.

A hack does not have to be a software hack: it could also be hardware-based, or completely non-technical. A non-technical hack could be a visualisation of data from the WLD platform, or some way of keeping everyone up to date with project statuses by using a whiteboard! Anything goes

Business Support Required

The main concern with running an internal hack day is that the business must understand and accept that a hack day is not a lazy day or a waste of time, but a valuable tool for inspiring creativity amoung participants and coming up with new ideas that could influence the future of the platform. Help is required in ensuring that, barring emergencies, the day will be free of interruptions for all participants. This will include scheduling projects away from the hack day to significantly reduce (and ideally remove) the possibility of participants being pulled off the hack day for project work. With proper planning, the hack day should not impact on the rest of the business, but other departments need to be aware that members of the development team are unavailable during the hack day. Non-participants from other parts of the business are required to act as the judging panel through the lightning talks. The people chosen to judge would need to be both technically- and business-minded. Some minor financial support is required to provide lunches for participants, and prizes for winning hacks.

Pre-Event Planning and Communication

During the run-up to the hack day, there are a number of things that must be considered and communicated, both with the participants of the day itself, and with the rest of the business.
Get people to start thinking about ideas for hacks. People should be encouraged to share any ideas they have, even if its something they themselves wouldnt want to do; a wiki page would be ideal for people to list and develop hack ideas. All hack groups should be arranged before the event to allow ample time for the technical setup. The project list is a good way for people to highlight their interest in a particular hack, and groups can be formed from this. The benefits of the hack day should be highlighted during the run-up to the day itself, to get participants interested and thinking about what they can build, and also to raise the idea that this is a competitive hacking day. Assuming the hack day is to be run on a Friday, breakfast is already provided by GP. Lunch would have to be organised to be delivered, as people should be encouraged to put as much work as possible into their hacks, and not to head out for an hour for lunch. Project work needs to be scheduled around the hack day to ensure that deadlines do not fall on or near (just before or after) the day. Members of staff in other parts of the business need to be explained the concept and benefits of the day, and to know that the development department is effectively off-limits for that day. A participation guide should be put together to give information to anyone taking part in the hack day. This should include details on what the aim of the day is, expectations on participants, the schedule of the day etc. This would be published on the hack day wiki, but should be presented to the development department verbally initially.

Event Planning Timeline

A rough planning schedule for the event follows, assuming that the hack day takes place on Friday 28th November.
Date Fri 7th Oct Fri 14th Oct 17th28th Oct Fri 28th Oct Event Hack day draft proposal discussed with dev management Proposal finalised and agreed with business Participation guide drafted, general approach finalised Hack Day wiki created with day information and ideas page Participation guide completed and agreed by dev management Mon 31st Oct Hack day announced to development department Participation guide circulated amoung participants Excitement begins to build 1st21st Nov Hack ideas added to wiki and teams formed Discussions on hack feasibility and data access requirements 21st24th Nov Wed 23rd Nov Fri 25th Nov Mon 28th Nov Technical setup: cloud boxes, git repos etc Lunch delivery confirmed Hack Day! Follow-up blog post on globaldev.co.uk

Hack Ownership and IP

Any hacks produced as part of the hack day are owned by GP, as the work will be undertaken during company time; participants are not to publish work without agreement from GP. However, depending on the nature of the hack, GP may well sign ownership of a hack over to its creators.