The Mediawiki Hackathon 2017 was organized at Vienna, on May 19,20,21 2017 very well. I liked many things in the entire event. Listing them here.
1. Awesome Event Organizing Team
Wikimedia Austria has 3 full time employees. They provided their full support all the times, from the event announcement. The announcement pages are full with all the required information. Annemarie Buchmann helped me to get done with all the visa processing on time. For every email I sent, got reply within a hour. It was so awesome to get helping hands from far away, so quickly.
2. Venue/Stay/Food at same place
JUFA Wien City was the venue for the event. It is a big Hotel with conference room, mini halls, Rooms for stay, bar, restaurant, play area, kids area, park and 24 hrs free snacks room.
As we stayed in same place, there is no delay in reaching the hackathon rooms. Just wake up, cleanup, jump into the event, till midnight. Then, reachout to room and sleep.
3. WiFI everywhere
The JUFA team provided good WiFI for the event and rooms. Never felt any disconnection.
4. Free travel Tickets
Anne, sent me few travel tickets to roam in and around the city for 5 days. From airport to return to airport, all the travel was covered by the tickets provided. With that we roamed around the city, in trams, in underground trains etc.
5. City Tour
The event team arranged for two city tours. They took people to a grad church and palace. Vienna is a historic city, full heritage monuments.
6. Party
On the Second day, we were invited for a party, at nearby pub/bar. Danced with the hackers. The rain, made us to dance till early morning 2 am.
7. Free Snacks/Tea/Coffee
The food provided was good. But to make all of us awake anytime and keep energized, there were free snacks/fruits/tea/coffee.
8. Regular updates from the organizing team
We received emails in regular intervals for preparing the event, calling for volunteering for blogging,photographing etc. Those emails made us to be excited about the event a month ahead.
9. Telegram/IRC chat
We had an IRC channel and telegram channel for quick chat. we can ask anything, search for anyone, ask for chargers, connectors, projectors, etc. All the requests were solved by entire team.
10. Mentor program
Experienced programmers willing to mentor, volunteered as mentors for newbies. They trained,shared their skills and helped to build applications. They met daily twice and discussed on how they can improve their assistance to others.
11. Dedicated Photography/Videography
There were dedicated photographers/videographers to cover the entire event. They are wikipedia volunteers who are contributing to commons. They happily volunteered for this. Wondered to know that wikimedia austria lended them high quality cameras and lenses.
12. Media Coverage
Local Press/Media people interviewed about the event and published online and other channels.
13. Short intro talks
On the sessions like inauguration, valedictory, there are only very short intro talks. These short talks save a lot of time and gave us plenty of time to hack.
14. Multiple Connectors for Projector on stage
We had connectors like VGA/HDMI/Apple for various laptops on every projector.
15. Lot of power sockets
We could roam anywhere in the venue and we found power sockets to plugin our devices. There was no shortage of sockets.
16. Freebies/Cards/Chocolates
We got a little watercan and other freebies on the registration desk.
17. Volunteer to take notes on etherpad on all meetings
On all meetings, trainings, we found one volunteers is taking notes on etherpad. It helped the speaker and listeners to concentrate on the talk, without worrying about jotting something on a notepad.
18. Privacy on Photographs
To give respect to the privacy on photographing people, they provided a Orange color tag. No one should take photo of people who are wearing the Orange Tags. For others, it is a blue tag.
Following people are behind this awesome people.
Program
Event management
Scholarship committee
Photos Courtesy: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Hackathon_2017/Participants#Team
I thank you all for all arrangements and smooth orchestration of the event.
I suggest all the above features to be in all the events, we conduct. Even very small actions, add more value to the events.
Thanks for the Wikimedia Foundation, Wikimedia Austria and all participants, mentors and volunteers.
