Running our own "Code-in" lite

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@cewing (and others),
Just thinking aloud here about what it might look like to run our own "lite" version of Google Code-In.

What if the community ran a Code-In like event but on our terms?
My suggested name is "Code-In Lite" for now.
The rewards would be similar to those in Google Code-In, Plone T-shirts, stickers etc...

How this might look

One of the reservations to do with Google Code-In was whether we could find enough persons with the time or energy to deal with such an undertaking. Code-In Lite would allow the Plone community to offer something similar but on our terms. For example, we might:

  • restrict participation to be bound by region/timezone, so a volunteer would be monitoring contributions from their own time-zone +/- 2 hours. (no volunteers from a time-zone, then no code-in there)
  • run it for two weeks only
  • allow tertiary students to participate (not just highschoolers)

Benefits

  • Students learn important tasks associated with software engineering.
  • Increase visibility of Plone community among younger, up and coming coders
  • Because we would have greater control over the pacing of the activities we are less likely to be overwhelmed as might happen with full blown Google Code in.
  • Volunteers would gain valuable experience which could eventually be used to participate in the full blown Google Code-in event.
  • It is a great gateway into GSOC

I already have UX testing tasks which would give us real data and help us understand how best to improve the Plone UX. I'm sure others in the community have small tasks they would love done by a few enthusiastic students.

Just my two cents. I'm absolutely open for discussion.

1 Like
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I like this idea, @pigeonflight. A few questions come to mind. The first is publicity. How do we let people know that this is happening? GCI has the advantage of having run for a number of years and having the weight of Google's publicity engine behind it. Another: how many mentors is "enough"? Do we have a breaking point below which we do not act? More questions will come, I am certain, but that's enough to discuss for now.

None of these questions should stop us from talking about what tasks we see that need doing and could be part of this project. At the very least it would be a very useful outcome to have our own honeydew list (do you know that idiom?). A bit of organization for our own housekeeping work would be great.