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Hacking Central

Anthony Arendt edited this page Aug 11, 2017 · 1 revision

What is a Hack?

A "hack" is a small project that aims to solve a specific problem using computational tools.

Examples of hacks include:

  • a working demo of a new or modified algorithm
  • an outline of a larger project, with some key features scoped
  • a new visualization of an old dataset
  • a modified algorithm applied to a new dataset
  • a mash-up of two pre-existing pieces of code to perform some new function

Pro-Tips

  • Start with ideas that are close to home: your graduate work, a project for your company, something you have always been interested in.
  • reach out to other participants: Hacking is a community activity!
  • start with the simplest things first, and add complexity later
  • Help your neighbor: you might be the person they need to solve their problem, and vice versa
  • When discussing, pitch your explanation to the least experienced hacker in the group, and you'll end up better understanding what you're trying to do

Getting Started

  • Who are you going to hack with? Here's the list of your fellow hackers
  • What are you going to work on?
  • Start pitching ideas on our #general slack channel, and then once projects materialize, we can migrate to a separate project channel
  • Begin populating a geohackweek GitHub project page

Schedule

  • Daily scrum - a 5 minute stand-up each morning to identify issues and to tackle problems before they get too big to handle! The purpose of a scrum is to encourage collaboration between groups, to offer expertise and to ask for help if you encounter a roadblock.

  • Regroup at 4:30pm for the day's wrap-up: volunteer to present what you've built, if you want, 1 minute each.

  • [Breakouts] will happen during the hack sessions - these are informal discussions/tutorials that will be organized as we go, via whiteboard. Listen out for announcements about breakouts during the afternoon.

  • In the final wrap-up on Friday, everyone presents. This means you will need to have whatever you want to show checked in to GitHub or posted to a shared Google drive! And if you just want to say what you got out of the week, that's cool too. Note that Friday's wrap-up is a celebration :-)

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