See below for update from Ian on Hackathon

Steven

From: Ian Edwards <iedwards.pub@gmail.com>
Date: 28 July 2013 18:23:51 BST
To: Steven Feldman <shfeldman@gmail.com>
Cc: Jeremy Morley <Jeremy.Morley@nottingham.ac.uk>, Jo Cook <jocook@astuntechnology.com>,  Mark Iliffe <markiliffe@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: FOSS4G Hackathon

Hi Steven

Quick update - feel free to post this on basecamp if you're logged in.

You'll have to trust me that we're on track to delivery a hackathon that is up to our usual standards (which have always been very well received). I can't promise that we have the same legacy (follow through) that Mark achieves on the SanHack, but hopefully some of the challenges at least will do a reasonable job of this.

Challenges are due in from partners by Wednesday and the main project manager for the partnership has been chasing regularly over the past month and believes we are on track.

Apologies for missing Friday's call - I haven't caught up yet, but the most important thing that I need an update on is our progress with field and lawn:
- power supply may me the limiting factor for max number of delegates
- guarantees that they can manage cooling (or heating) if required
also we still need exact details of the wireless service that we can expect.

Once challenges are up on the web, and I know whether numbers are limited by power, then I'll push on OSGeo and UK GIS mailing lists.  Whilst hitting the UK mailing lists I'll also give final details for the OSGeo UK AGM.  If hackathon numbers look like they could be a problem then I have a plan to push the idea of "Libre AND gratis" (free speech AND free beer) which I think will easily get us over our lower limit of 30 and keep my managers happy.

Mark - many thanks for the Eventbrite log in.

I'll provide an email update by end of Wednesday to confirm where we're at with challenges.

I'm away Thurs this week until the following Wednesday (7th). I'll be almost completely out of email contact again, but after this there will be no furher upsets and I will then be on team calls every week until the event.

Bear with me if the web site is not fully updated until Wednesday 7th - it will depend on how late the challenges are received.

I've had a couple of struggles with management over my required time investment (which you all know at this stage needs to be very significant).  It's clear to me that I can't really manage being the organisation's travel agent ("What bus should I get when I arrive?", "Is my room booked?", blah blah blah...), creating and running our workshop, giving my presentation and leading the hackathon without investing most of my time at this stage.  So... last week I stated that my time is 100% committed and so far there's been no response suggesting they'll fire me.  For me everything will rest on a perceived positive outcome.




On Fri, Jul 26, 2013 at 6:00 PM, Steven Feldman <shfeldman@gmail.com> wrote:
Ian

I hope you are well? You haven't been on the last couple of team calls so I was wondering if everything was ok with you?

The LOC are concerned that we aren't hearing much about the hackathon from you. 

  • When you replied to my mail of the 12th you said that more challenges would be going up on the site but that does not seem to have happened. 
  • I mailed you regarding the broken link to the data on the one challenge that is on the site, but the link still seems to be broken.
  • You asked me to include a push for the hackathon in this week's mailing to delegates but you never provided me with any text to use as we had agreed.
  • We haven't seen any outreach or publicity initiated by the MO for this event

Hopefully everything is going well with your plans and there is nothing for us to be concerned about. However the lack of communication worries me and the rest of the team. I would be very grateful if you could post a full update on the basecamp so that everyone knows what is happening.

I am available to talk on Monday if you wish

Have a good weekend

Best regards


______
Steven