Sorry for bringing it back to basics, maybe I lost track but what would be the expected outcome of this Hackaton?

On Thu, Nov 12, 2015 at 9:00 PM, Jordyn Buchanan via UA-discuss <ua-discuss@icann.org> wrote:

Hey all:

I have two thoughts on this:

1) I like to periodically go back to thinking about the UASG as a coordinating body.  Given that general ! statement of principle/purpose, it seems like the goal here should be to see if we can find someone who knows how to do hackathons and have them host it with some level of support and awareness-raising from the UASG.  Maybe that could be a local university or tech company.  If we find ourselves in the position that we're putting on a hackathon as opposed to helping to support one, I'd suggest that we're losing sight of the coordination role and it's going to be hard to scale up UA efforts if we expect the UASG to have to be doing most of the heavy lifting.

2) Before we really answer the question of whether a hackathon in Marrakech makes sense (as a way for us to invest our time and money), versus a hackathon somewhere else, I think a good question to think about is what sorts of projects we expect the hackers to be hacking away at.  While it's true that there's some engineers at ICANN meetings, they tend to be focu! sed on systems/network infrastructure.  So if our goal, for example, to create some cool javascript that allowed for proper right-to-left domain handling and conversion to punycode, I'd guess we wouldn't have a lot of the right people at the meeting to be strong contributors to this effort.  On the other hand, folks may be able to articulate some class of problem that we do want to hack away at and where we think we'll have the right folks on site.  If so, that's great, but we should clearly articulate what we're after and, to Mike's point, consider bringing in some people who are going to be really strong coders and idea generators to make sure we have a nucleus of hackers to build around.

Pulling together, what I'd hate to see is a hackathon-for-the-sake-of-a-ha ckathon that ends up not being successful and discourages future UA technical efforts along these same lines.  I really want to see these sorts of hackath! ons take place, but I want to make sure we're getting the most bang for buck out of the effort this group will invest into making it happen.

Jordyn

On Thu, Nov 12, 2015 at 12:52 AM, Mike Silber <mike.silber@icann.org> wrote:

Rubens and Don +1

The ccNSO / ccTLD community have a tech day. Try not to overlap and engage with the organizers and coordinate as far as possible. Don't expect too much though.

Regional IDN ccTLDs are a great place to start.

Avoid the corporate communications machine from getting hold of this and turning it into something it is not. Under promise (or don't promise at all) and over deliver.

While no one should be excluded, ensure invitations and communications make it clear that this is a technical engagement and policy discussions happen elsewhere.

Consider travel funding specifically for this. To me the criteria would be technical skill and regional location!

Just my 2c (and at current exchange rates that is about $0,0018) so take it for what it is worth.

Mike

> On 12 Nov 2015, at 02:18, Rubens Kuhl <rubens@registro.br> wrote:
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>> On Nov 11, 2015, at 9:20 PM, Don Hollander <don.hollander@icann.org> wrote:
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>> Here’s my take on the Hackathon idea @ ICANN55:
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>> 1) ICANN is a technology conference and there would be few technology conferences of its size held in the region.
>> 2) I note that ICANN is generally around policies, but there are still a lot of geeks there
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> ccTLD activities at ICANN are usually of a more technical tone, and ccTLDs are the most used domains in the AF region, not gTLDs. Involving the local IDN ccTLDs might be key to attract more geeks.
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> Rubens
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