View source for Why Code Sprints? And How?



=== self intros ===
General topics:
* How are people using hackathons
* How to bring in people (non-coders)
* sustainability.

===What is the win? ===
Maybe not the code produced. Everyone agrees sprints are good, but it is hard to put finger on specific results. 

* sand drawings / mandelas made by Tibetan monks get destroyed after use

* pizza oven sprint, masons get together and*  build an oven.
wins:
* design of pizza ovens
* practice of building. 



What is sustainability?
 * does the code get supported 
 * does the code get reviewed / commited. 

===What is a hackathon ? ===
Getting people together for a short amount of time 3 to 24 hours who care about something to work on goals 

example: DrupelCon codepsrint after every 'Con, issues are identified people go to room to classes of 

Drupal Media Module code sprint was committers only for 5 days. 

Commonality, is bringing together people ordinarily not physically together. 
===Examples: code sprints===

Mapping parties. 

===Pros===
* Access to core contributors. 
* getting people in same room to improve 
* easy entry for new people 
** limited commitmen


* get a lot of work done in short amount of time (debtable: )
* Energy --requires building on ongoing
* build community
* somebody reading your code 10 minutes later
* face to face contact

===Cons (caveats?) ===
* civic hackathons by boston city to design apps build apps for selves
** pub crawl app won. 
* need to have people in room who aren't developers or designers but users
* focus is hard to come by 
** walking in with a goal is needed but rare
* need incentives to focus 
** money in contest incentive
* sustainability is huge 
* be clear on goals: sort ideas ? sort solutions ?
* proof of concept good.
* contest 
* '''goals''' important
* What are you going to do with half finished thing. 
* don't think about getting a product. 
* tough to get city staff involved on saturday

===future code sprint ideas===
* define problems

===Important things for good sprints ===
* organize , have things for people to do
** easier with established projects with issue queues
* get in designers not coders
** designers won't sit behind screen for 18 hours
* think about setup to attract diversity of people


===definitions===
Contests vs adding to code base
hackathons where developers
more built around publicity than results. 
   Here's an event we're great
Getting users & coders together winds up as design sprint
24 sprint for web site development

===Layers maodule ===
Took code in sub optional

===Contest hackathons ===
* when city has contest doesn't create product because it doesn't fit RFP

===related issues==
app contests that offer $1000 for a year's work.

===TS people ===
Still inclined to do a sprint but manage expectations, focus on RFP