Introductions
Willow Brugh: Tell me, who are you?

Kav: Kav Latiolais

Willow: What are you into? What sorts of things do you do?

Kav: S lot of stuff. I do a lot of consulting around [inaudible 00:20] start up, customer development, design competing, a little bit of what they call liberating structure, which is a really cool thing, you might want to talk to the folks who created that at some point. That would probably be good. I’ve facilitated a lot of Start-up Weekends.

Willow: How did you get into facilitating Start-up Weekends?

Kav: It was interesting case. I had a buddy who was going to go to the one in Portland and I was at Microsoft and he’s, “You should come, it’ll be fun.” I agreed to go with him and we ended up taking the train down with the CEO, at the time, who was the facilitator for our event. This was back when they were first getting things off the ground.

I went to an event in Portland and I had a really amazing experience. I had a team of six or seven people. They just did a really amazing amount of work in two days. There were definitely arguments about stuff, but we were, in general, pretty well organized.

It felt like, a little bit like night and day compared to my day job where just planning to get the amount of work done, that we had gotten done over the weekend would have taken at least three days.

I was really excited about that. Mark, who was the facilitator, also the CEO, said, “Dude, I really liked how you ran your team, you did a really great job. Can you coach the next event and help some of these teams with their project management stuff?” I started coaching at different events.

I coached the one in Seattle, the weekend after the one I did in Portland. Probably, two months later, I coached another one and then I think I coached one more. Then, they asked me to go start facilitating, or to organize one and then start facilitating because they want you to organize one first.

I organized one at Microsoft in Redmond. Next I actually ended up flying out as the backup facilitator. It was really like a technical facilitator, that event I did in Tel Aviv, a joint Israeli Palestinian event. They had a facilitator already, but the budget had money to bring out a technical expert, so I came out then.

I ended up doing a lot of the facilitation there. The guy who was their facilitator was a great guy. He just didn’t have the relationship with a lot of the Palestinian folks I did, because I spent a few days in Ramallah, while working on them on some stuff.

•    Hackathons
Willow: Cool. Tell me what you think about hack-a-tons.

Kav: It’s an interesting model, and it’s more talking about start-up weekend specifically, and its relationship to hack-a-thons. I grew up in [inaudible 03:24] culture as most developers my age did, where a lot of people got into coding was to scratch their own itch. I got into programming, because I was really frustrated with a video game, I was playing and I wanted to make it easier, which is not at all how programming works but I was 12-years-old then.

We grew up writing apps, to entertain ourselves, and to make our lives easier. The hack-a-ton model has really grown out of that, the idea of I want to build a utility for this or I want to build a framework that does that, because it’s a problem I keep running into and I don’t think anyone has really solved this problem.

It used to be that hack-a-tons were very much like get some pizza, get a bunch of people together and we’re just going to geek out on scratching our own itch. That was fun. I did maybe one, maybe two of those. Sometimes they’re around a particular technology, so it was come to this hack-a-ton on this new technology. It’s sort of an experience, like you take a course on doing that thing.

Interestingly, I never really got into that. I think, part of it is because the crowd that gets really into that, is into solving technical problems for their own sake. Then, I think the other interesting historical world is the business plan competition. The business plan competition, being the place where as someone who has got an idea for business, you sit around for a month or whatever and write up your business plan.

It’s this 1,500 page monstrosity full of made-up shit, and then in the business plan competition, you go up in front of an audience, pitch all this made up stuff that you’ve got and then everyone decides who’s idea seems like it’s most realistic, or most likely to make money, or whatever and they give you a reward. A lot of Start up Weekend is about bringing those two things together, to get rid of the lame elements of both.

Let’s build a product that’s focused on an actual business, and let’s learn about what that business might actually look like, and then from the business side let’s make sure we’re actually validating real business concepts, instead of making shit up. I think, as start-up weekend and similar events have matured, they focus more and more on really weeding out the stuff that doesn’t make any sense.

I think I’ve seen that with a lot of other stuff around, civic hack-a-tons will follow a very similar model, where they’re very much focused on the end-user or end customer, rather than on a programmer scratching their itch. I think, an interesting thing is in the field in general, of software in particular. Although I think technology generally could be stated this way, we’ve reached a point where scratching your own itch is no longer sufficient to build a business.

I think, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, 40 years ago, sure. MS-DOS was great, because it helped Bill Gates do this thing, and then he sold it, because everyone else wanted to do that thing too. Any solution to a problem was an awesome solution, whereas know there are already a million solutions out there, so you’ve got to be building something pretty awesome.

Willow: Yeah, I haven’t thought of it that way.

Kav: And with that, you have to actually look at the human beings you’re building for, and I think that is a lot of what was being changed in the world of hack-a-thons, in the last few years.

What do you think the purpose of a hack-a-thon is?
Kav: The purpose of the traditional hack-a-thon, is like sword sharpening and skill practicing. It’s really all about doing your katas, so to speak. Getting better at the stuff you do, or learning something new, or solving a problem that has been on your list forever, and you just haven’t gotten around to it.

It’s very easy, as a developer, to get an itch for something where you’re like, “I have this idea. I want to work on it.” But without people around you who are also working it’s hard to motivate yourself.

I think more and more, we’re seeing really interesting stuff, where these hack-a-thons are turning into business generators of one kind or another. I don’t think probably, five years ago, people were asking the question when they left start-up weekend or a hack-a-thon like event.

I don’t think they were asking the question “How can I make every day of my life look like this?” Whereas I think more and more people are asking that.

More and more young people are saying, “I want to work on something that’s fulfilling. I want to work on something that’s inspiring. I want to work on the kind of thing that I would volunteer my weekend to work on. Not because I intend to volunteer all my weekends to work on that, but because I want to be that happy about it.” I think that’s really one of the most important things that has changed.

I don’t think a lot of actual companies come out of start-up weekend and I don’t think that the projects people work on necessarily continue on, but I do think their appetite for that kind of work really gets blown up.

It’s creative and I think once that appetite, for that kind of work, has been created it’s hard to turn it off, which means these people are now demanding work environments that are more empowering, and allow them to work faster in smaller groups, more effectively, on interesting problems.

Historically in the large corporate environment there’s a certain amount of, “Well this is the way it has to be, because this is the way it has always been, and there is no other way.” I think, more and more you’re hearing in the corporate environment, “This is the way it has to be for us, because of this concern and this concern and this concern.”

I think the large corporate development cycle, is very much becoming not something that people are successfully able to argue is the right way, but they’re now arguing it’s the right way for them because of some special extenuating circumstances. Now, of course, everyone has special extenuating circumstances which makes them not all that special.

What do the projects look like for your events?
Kav: They’re all over the place, depending on what part of the world you’re in. I think, in general, for start-up weekend, it’s a lot of proto-businesses. At the beginning of the weekend, they often look like, “Hey I have an itch, I want to scratch around, not a technology problem I have”, like, “Oh my market is really good” by converting capital letters to lower case letters.

“Every time we go to a bar, it’s really annoying to wait in a long line at the bar, and it’s hard to get a drink, so I want an app to help do that. Tonight’s thing is over the course of the weekend, that office goes away right, because if you actually invested in the problem of “there’s always a line at the bar, it’s hard for me to get a drink”, there’s no business in solving that problem because the person who would pay to have that problem solved and that’s the bar.

That’s not a problem for them. They’re probably partnered or grouped with each other. They don’t give a shit if you have to wait.

In fact, optimally, someone is always about to wait or just waiting.

They start out quite often, like personal, itch scratching and then they tend to turn, if the folks actually do the work over the weekend, they tend to turn into concepts that make significantly more sense as a business.

There are some perennial favorites. We kind of joke, and this is a horrible thing to admit to, but we kind of joke that there should be a start-up weekend drinking game, where you drink every time, someone pitches and idea targeting affluent, young, white men.

Because every one that you go to, it’s like, “I want to build a dating site, it’s hard to meet women.” Well building a dating site is not going to solve that. “I want to build an app that makes it easier for deciding which restaurant to go to. I want to build an app that will help me find cool plans.” I think there’s a lot of good stuff there. Quite often [inaudible 12:36] at a restaurant.

Willow: Interesting.

Kav: A lot of it is micro-optimization of middle class to upper middle class white, young men.

Willow: I remember that, from one of the ones I was at.

Kav: Yeah, the dating app,for example, is exactly that. I understand it. Part of it is because you’ve got a weekend, you’re not going to really get too crazy about anything real. One of the one’s on my list, is I want an app where I can text it that I’m about to start drinking, and it will text me every hour, to ask me if I’ve had water recently, or to remind me to eat.

Then when I’m safe at home I text it, “I’m home, stop bothering me about water and stuff.”

That’s not a universal problem, the fact that I drink too much while not paying attention and forget to drink water and forget to eat. I don’t see that as a hit, but it would be an entertaining thing to build over a weekend.

I think hack-a-thons still keep to their roots a little bit in that, even though people are pretending to thinking about businesses, and pretending to be thinking about customers that are not themselves, I make a lot of info [inaudible 14:05]

What ends up happening to some of the projects after the event?
Kav: Franck will give you a bunch of statistics that he collected at the start-up weekend offices, to hear the actual numbers of how many teams continue on, how many projects continue on. I’m not certain I believe those numbers, but it would be worth getting them.

I think a lot of times, and I have no quantitative data, but from observation and my qualitative experience of it, a lot of the times, the teams keep working on the projects they’re working on. Particular teams that either placed, or really executed well over the weekend, they have a tendency to continue to execute well.

Their progress slows to almost nothing though, unfortunately, because they don’t devote enough time to it, and the people who are most valuable on those teams, are the people who are most over-committed already.

Another thing, there is it’s difficult for a start-up weekend project to turn into a real business, because the teams are quite often five to six people and investors are not going to give money for a founding team of five. Invariably also you pick each other because you met on Friday night. There are team personality and dynamics issues. There are competence issues with some of the people in the group.

Navigating that particular “Tetris piece” is quite often not something people succeed at. I think the ones that do really do a great job though.

The teams that are able to say, “Look dude, you didn’t help over the weekend, you were kind of a pain in the ass then. While you are the person with the most available free time, to be working on this, none of the rest of us have any time. There’s a reason for that, and we don’t need you, so goodbye.” I think teams that effectively say that, are the ones that can kick ass.

What are the attendees of your events like and what do they get out of the event?
Kav: I think, a lot of what they get out of the event, generally before I talk about the specific categories, in general, a lot of them meet people they want to work with in the future. A lot of it is a power networking thing. One of my favorite app pitches that you see time and time again at start-up weekend, is an app to help you more effectively network with people at events so you can make better connections.

If you look at start-up weekend, that’s exactly what it is. Everyone who is on the team, together, builds a pretty good bond. I’m definitely still in contact with all of the people from my first start-up weekend team, and I’m in regular contact with most of the people I’ve ever worked with at a start-up weekend on anything.

Some, more so than others, but, in general, we all keep in touch and we’re pretty close because of that shared pressure, shared past, shared struggle, shared striving towards the goal.

I think the networking or community building aspects of it are often undervalued. In terms of building a successful technology community, start-up community, any of these things. Like the value of having a group of people who worked together, even for just a few days, and know what each other are good at and bad at, and excited about, and not excited about, and how everyone responds to stress.

Do you become really mean? Do you over communicate? Do you under communicate? I think that’s really valuable.

As opportunities arise, we now have a network of people, who are well-connected to each other, but also who really, truly understand each other’s capabilities, and help move the right people in the right place at the right time.

I think, specifically, shape of attendees…We have three different attendee types at Start-up Weekend, traditionally, software developers, designers, and business people.

Business people is a bit of a catchall, and what I want each to get out of the event, I have three separate goals for each of those groups.

For me, [inaudible 19:01] Start-up Weekend experiences, one where you actually learn all of the lessons, even though they don’t apply or they’re not, specifically, the one lesson I want you to have learned for your role.

If you come in there and you’re a developer, I want you to learn just how fast you can build stuff, and how you could take an idea from zero to a working, awesome application in two days, because I think a lot of developers work in environments where they’re restricted, or with tools where they’re restricted, and they just don’t understand how fast they can actually build something.

You want the business people to understand that; it’s not their ideas that matter, and that to be successful in business, is not about you being really smart, or you having really good ideas. It has everything to do with your humility, and your ability to listen to your customers, and learn from them, effectively.

For designers, I want them to understand that not all the work that they could possibly do in the world is to spec. Not everything is agency work. They don’t have to act like they’re a slave to someone else’s vision.

Quite often, it’s hard to get designers to come to Start-up Weekend because they perceive it as an event where they’re going to go and work for someone else for free all weekend.

As developers, we don’t have that perspective at all. Developers see it as an opportunity to build something that they own that’s theirs. I want designers to gain that perspective as well .

Now, whether people learn those lessons or not, whether they take that away…Sometimes they learn what you want to teach them, and sometimes they have a more important lesson to learn.

Do you have a favorite story?
Kav: Well, my very favorite story. This is the big, “Why do I do this? Why is it exciting to me?” At a fundamental level actually it did happen at that first Start-up Weekend in Tel Aviv.

Part of it was, “I want to facilitate a lot more”, and probably why I’ve gone all over the world doing it now. I was in Ramallah giving a talk on using Visual Studio for startups because I was on the Visual Studio team at the time.

It was probably my fifth or sixth talk of the day, which was crazy because I had been told I was just going to go meet with some people, and shake some hands, and informally chat with a few people, and every company that we went to, there were like a million people there.

As a result, by the end of talking to a million people, I developed this pattern of questions that I would ask everyone in the audience, as they were coming up and thanking me for the talk.

I’d say, “What idea are you going to pitch at Start-up Weekend. Are you going to go? What idea are you going to pitch”?

There was this girl, who I asked, “Are you going to go to Start-up Weekend?” She said, “Yeah, maybe. Some of my friends are going, but I’m not really sure whether I want to.” I said, “Well, what idea are you going to pitch”? She was like, “Well, I have an idea, but it’s not any good. It’s a really bad idea.”

I’m like, “You should pitch it anyway.” She said, “Ah, you know, I don’t know. Like, it’s really not a good idea.” I said, “It doesn’t matter. Most of the ideas are going to be bad ideas. Just pitch it anyway. I’m sure it’ll be fine. It’s a really great experience to do it, so you should definitely come, and definitely pitch.”

She was like, “Well, maybe I’ll come.” Fast forward a few days. I’m at the start-up weekend, and I see that she’s there so I’m like, “All right. Are you excited to pitch your idea? You know how to take care of all that?”

She was like, “Well, no. I’m not going to pitch my idea. I definitely not. I came. I’ve gone that far. I’ve done that thing, but I’m not going to pitch”. I’m like, “Well, you should, even just for the practice of standing in front of a room full of potentially, honestly, hostile strangers.”

It’s really character building. I do hate to say it, but it is character building. It helps you get better at doing that again, and again, even if you just go up there and, basically, talk nonsense for a minute, and it’s only a minute. At Start-up Weekend the initial idea pitch is only a minute.

You can endure anything horrifying for a minute. I tried to sell her a few times, as people were networking, and she was like, “No. I’m not going to do it.” I was like, “All right, fine.” We go up and I look at the line, and she’s definitely not in the line of people pitching. They pitch. There are some good ones.

There are some really bad ones, including one by this guy. He was not particularly good, but he was like already bragging about it, honestly.

She gets up on stage because we let people go on after the beginning. She gets onstage, and pitches her idea. It’s actually a pretty good idea.

A social network thing, for people with kids who are trying to find…I can’t remember exactly what it was, but I think it was find activities for the kids. I’m not quite sure. She pitched her idea, and then everybody went to vote. They all vote. Her idea gets picked it turns out.

It comes to team recruiting time, and I’m just walking the room keeping an eye on everything. People are recruiting their teams, and I see that she is standing there, kind of by herself looking a little upset. I walk up to her, and I’m like, “Hey. What’s going on”?

She says, “Well, now, no one wants to work with me because I’m Palestinian. All the Israeli people are ignoring me.” The problem here is that, when you’re recruiting teams on start-up weekend you have to hustle.

It’s not something you can just expect people to come join your team. You’ve got to be like, “Hey, what do you do? You should be on my team. Hey, what do you do? You should be on my team.”

She really wasn’t doing that. She was standing back, and she was really saying like, “Oh, this is bs. Nobody wants to be on my team. They just voted for it because they were trying to be nice, but now they hate me.”

We took her around, and we talked to a few different folks who hadn’t found a team yet, and we got her a team of like four or five people who were decent, but one of the people was this arrogant, egotistical guy whose idea, of course,didn’t get picked, and let them go.

They were working, and I went to check in on them a few hours later, and they were working on the arrogant guy’s idea. He had taken over her team.

I was like, “Huh. This isn’t good,” but that’s part of the learning experience. We gave her a little bit of coaching, but didn’t really directly interfere, and then backed off again.

We found out about an hour later, that she had actually sat down with him within that hour, and said, “Look. Your idea didn’t picked, dude. Mine did. So we’re working on my idea. If you want to work on your idea, you can go do that somewhere else.”

She kicked him out of her team, which was really kind of awesome because she went from being afraid of everyone in the room, to being able to tell somebody, “Look. This isn’t what we’re doing.”

She then recruited some of the folks in Ramallah that hadn’t been able to get the permits to come into Tel Aviv. She recruited them and worked with them over Skype. She got her whole team working pretty solidly on the design page. They built a lot of stuff.

The thing they built was a pretty comprehensive, there was even a lot of crazy animation and stuff. There was a lot of good stuff there. She went and pitched it on Sunday, and did a marvelously great job, and it ended up coming in second or third place for the event. I think second place, and totally deserved it.

There was no like, “Oh, this is a Palestinian girl, we should give a Palestinian a slot on the winning teams.” No. She totally killed it. We finished up the event. We were celebrating and stuff.

We went out into the town, and I bumped into her a little bit later, before she was on her way back, and she said, “I just wanted to say, Thank you. Because before, whenever I wanted to try to do something, there was this voice in my head, or whatever, that would tell me, It’s probably not going to work. You’ll probably fail at it.”

She said, “I just wanted to thank you, because I know that voice is wrong. Like, I’ve seen it now. I did something I didn’t think I could do, and that’s awesome.” She was like, “It’s changed the way I think about what I’m capable of doing.”

Willow: Well, that’s fucking awesome.

Kav: I was like, “Fuck yeah. That is awesome.” I was like, “I want to do more of this.” I want to do more of empowering people, who don’t think that they are going to succeed here, to succeed at these things. Right?

Those are my favorite Start-up Weekends. It’s part of why I like to go to crazy countries that no one in the US has ever heard of. Yeah, it’s cool to a crazy country no one’s ever heard of, but the reason I really like it, is I feel like they’re a lot of people there who get ignored. They get overlooked, I guess. You know?

Willow: Mm-hmm.

Kav: Kind of an underdog nation. As individuals, I don’t know that they always see that, but there’s definitely, always, a little bit of a like, “Well, if we were in the US, this would be so much simpler.”

It’s like, “Guys, you actually have great opportunity here. In the US it’s like being in the middle of the ocean filled with sharks. Every little micro optimization already exists in the US. You have a huge opportunity.”

“Your country is, quite often, just getting mobile devices in everyone’s hands. You could be creating significant businesses that operate in this country or this region, that just wouldn’t be viable stateside.”

•    Big Picture
Do you see yourself as a part of a wider movement?
Kav: I would like to. The very deep reason I do a lot of the things that I do, both at work as a part of Start-up Weekend, this is very short version of the phrase is, “I want to end the industrial revolution.”

What I mean by that, is that we’ve created all of these systems around what work is, and the making of things is built on this model of optimization, and consistency, and streamlining, and quantification.

I read a great article the other day. It was something about how Google doesn’t ever want to hire anyone who stands out too much because, of course, if they did, then they would have keep that person forever, because what would happen if that person moved on.

They would lose all the value and, potentially, the things that that person had created would unmaintainable. I just want to get rid of that mindset. I just don’t think that that’s healthy.

Attempting to treat people in a reductive manner, takes away some of our humanity. A big part of the movement that I see myself as a part of, is ending this idea of leadership, as this ivory tower job.

Not ivory tower, because ivory tower is education, but very distant from the front line. I want to bring all of the strategic thinking, all of the leadership to the workers, so that they, as groups, can make the right choices. Maybe that sounds communist.

That’s really what I believe. I believe it’s time for the Protestant Reformation of work. The idea that the boss is the one with smart ideas is ridiculous. I see this time and time again.

I talk to new, cool managers at all these companies. There are people who used to do the work. They used to be software developers. They’ve gotten into a project management, whatever the lead role, and you talk to them about their work.

They’re like, “Yeah. Sometimes, I really love just doing the work, but what I really want to do is influence what work gets done because I have all these ideas, because I’ve been so close to the front lines.”

“I’ve been so close to the customer. I know what the customer needs. I don’t have that strategic scope to make those decisions. So, I’m going to work my tail off so that in 10 years, I can have the reach to control in what direction we move.”

For me, that just seems ridiculous. First of all, by the time you get there, you’re ten years out of date. There’s some other new kid who’s sitting there thinking, “Jesus, we’re executing on a strategy that’s ten years out of date.”

“I’m going to get into the leadership track so that I can reach the point that I can have a say on product strategy.” We need to get into this mode of including everyone more into strategy and leadership. I think, it’s more fulfilling. I think, it’s more effective.

Do you think that hack-a-thons are accomplishing that idea?
Kav: To some extent. I think, they’re showing people what a world where small groups of dedicated individuals with access to the tools to develop strategic insight, what those teams could look like.

I worry a little bit about them, occasionally, being prescriptive. Part of it is we really want to be prescriptive. We’re trying to break another pattern. I do worry about any pattern that’s learned, rather than discovered, as seeming a little forced.

I do think, in general, it’s because it’s exposing people to that way of working. I do think it changes that.

A lot of the hierarchy that exists in organizations today, is about maintaining a perfect picture of what’s going on across the organization.  I think, that seems like a valuable thing, when you don’t recognize the cost. Flexibility, you’re paying for. I think hackathons [inaudible 34:22] help teams understand what it would look like, if they weren’t spending so much of their time focused on tracking the work, and would just focus on doing the work, and making sure they’re doing the right work.

Do you have anything else you want to add to it?
Kav: Probably, but I think that’s good. If you think of anything that seems like I [inaudible 34:57] .

Willow: One of the things that’s come up is the difference between…First of hack-a-tons, were in hacker spaces and hacker cons.

Then, you have ones emerging around the same time out of the open source community, and out of businesses that wanted to do work sprints. It seems like the groups that are doing the entrepreneurship are even newer than all that.

How do you feel about the tie-back to roots. This is not a part of the formal interview, but I’d still like to know your input on it. How does this tie into open source or hacker e-source, or whatever else?

Kav: I didn’t mention this in the earlier part, but it’s worth mentioning. A big part of the “seeing how fast you can develop things” comes from leveraging open source platforms, rather than whatever legacy, corporate, proprietary crap their company’s been using.

I think, that the hack-a-ton, is as much as space to explore a business concept that you’re not familiar with, as it is a space to explore technology that you’re not as familiar with. An opportunity to explore different technology stacks in a low-cost way.

I think, people are making smarter decisions, about what they want to use. As a result, I think there are actually two classes of developers these days.

There are developers who are keeping their ear to the ground, in terms of what new tech is coming out, what’s interesting. What frameworks might be worth playing with? Who’s going to make their lives easier?

They’re kind of dialed into the open source community. They’re trying early versions of stuff. They’re giving feedback. They’re submitting pull requests. Sometimes, they’re even really heavily engaged in the community. They’re giving talks on this stuff.

Then, there are developers who are like, they learned to program years ago. They got a job doing .net stuff, java stuff, or whatever. That’s what they do. They don’t see it as their responsibility to be aware of the latest stuff.

Quite often when they do look at the latest stuff, they find a reason why it’s dumb, rather than really being open to the exploration of new technology.

Given the way the open source community has leveraged all that contribution that it has, it’s actually becoming this generational difference in the capabilities of developers.

Developers who are stuck on an old stack, and aren’t investing in learning new stacks, are slow hands. There’s often trade-offs. They’re code is often more stable, but the idea that you can produce anything in a weekend is insane to them.

They just operate on a whole different time scale. Meanwhile, these others that are getting really into those stacks, contributing, see themselves as part of the larger software community, that helps each other build better software are getting faster and faster and faster, and better and better and better.

Willow: I was typing.. It’s OK.

Kav: I think, that ties into a lot of the philosophical arguments around waterfall, agile, and even some of the post-agile stuff. I think, agile software development methodologies are being pretty heavily co-opted by the system, to turn into waterfall.

Big corporations keep modifying agile, so that it works with their business. What works for their business often means, it goes back to being exactly what it wasn’t really meant to do; which is project out how long it would take to develop software.

Two years, in advance and plan out a feature map and all this… It’s just stuff that was… Agile was really meant to support the developer community, and encourage everyone to be more honest with each other. I’ve seen implementations ignore all that.

Meanwhile, the other guys are starting to ask the question, and it’s the question we focus on, [inaudible 39:47] on delivery product. Making no accountability for what product is built, why, is unacceptable.

Just having the customer representative come to my meetings, and tell me what priority the feature is; that works if I’m a waiter. As a responsible software developer, I shouldn’t think of myself as a waiter. I should think of myself as a doctor.

I’m not somebody who takes your order for an application you won’t want, and gives you that application. I’m somebody who diagnoses your problem, and develops the right application through software.

Willow: You’re so great.

Kav: Thanks. I think the more developers think of themselves that way, and the more the community that works on software thinks of themselves that way, the better our software will be, and the better we’ll be at solving the real problems that we have in the world. instead of this stupid, made-up shit.

I do think hack-a-tons help with that a lot, because if you can get people out of the building. If you can get them talking to customers, they begin to understand it. Their vision of what the problem is, is not correct.

Just asking the customer, “Hey, what’s your problem?” is not going to get you a meaningful answer. There’s the apocryphal story, that I’m sure you probably heard. If not from me, then from somebody else about NASA and space pens.

It’s not a true story, but it’s a perfect example of life. You don’t ask people what they want, as a solution. You ask them what they struggles with, and then you design the solution. You’re the designer. The rise of the problem-solving designer, rather than the visual designer or the interaction designer. I think it’s going to be a really interesting goal in the next few years.

Willow: That’s what I’ve got.

Kav: Hopefully, it will replace the stupid scrum master role. Scrum master should not be a job title.

Preamble

Willow: Yeah, it’s amazing.

Ali Llewellyn: That’s awesome.

Willow: I’m totally spoiled here Ali. Everybody’s so free with their time, it’s nuts.

Ali: And they appreciate you properly.

Willow: I feel appreciated, yes. I also feel challenged an awful lot of the time.

Ali: That’s awesome.

Willow: It is. It is.

Ali: To be given an opportunity where that [inaudible 00:33] is really valuable.

Willow: Yeah. Absolutely. How is the new gig?

Ali: It’s good. It’s a lot of change. I’m glad I have Nick with me. As you know, I really love all of those guys. It’s the big shift, going from being government to being an external consultant . I don’t think I had worked with enough consultants to really realize what the consulting world was like.

Willow: It’s very different.

Ali: [laughs] I think that, for me, is the complication. The people are great. It’s hard when you’re in a position that you have to go pitch for all your work, but that’s the real world.

Willow: That’s why it’s nice to be in consulting, being a consultant for the government, because it’s often pretty steady work, but you also get to be outside of that system.

Ali: Exactly. All in all, it’s good. It’s a shift. We just had team retreat where everybody was in Colorado, and we tried not to get drowned in the floods. Did you hear the story? We got up there in the middle of the afternoon.

Willow: I didn’t know that.

Ali: We did. I was typing with Lindsey because Lindsey was doing such a great job on the docs from a digital humanitarian perspective. I was like Lindsay, we’re here. If I can talk to anybody for you, let me know.

Willow: Very cool. I bet that was very cool.

Ali: Yeah. Anyway, that’s my story.

Willow: I want to do this thing with you. I need to make sure that I sent you paperwork, which is this thing. Apparently when you’re in academia, you have to send people consent forms. [laughs]

Ali: Awesome. Is it something I’m going to have to print and scan?

Willow: You can also just do a digital signature on it, and it will be fine. Cool.

Ali: You are my BFF.

[laughter]

Ali: That wasn’t [indecipherable 02:55] . Hearts from the future. Yes.

[laughter]

Ali: I was afraid you were going to say to fax it, and I was going to cry. [laughs]

Willow: Uh-huh. I don’t even know if there is a fax machine in the Media Lab. [laughs]

Ali: Yeah, good. That’s a wonderful thing. All right. Where do I sign this thing?

Willow: Just anywhere on the last page, and you can do it after we talk. That’s totally fine.

Ali: Oh. I’m like, “I’ll sign whatever you want, Willow, no worry,” because I don’t even [laughs] have to read it.

Willow: Read it also. Some of the main points are if you are OK with this being recorded, one. Two, if you want those recordings to be for just the research or if it’s OK to publish that as well. Anything that does get published, the either notes and/or the write-up will be run by all of the participants first to make sure that they’re presented in a way that they want to be presented in.

Ali: Sure. I am fine with it all being published. I want it for exactly that reason, especially since much of the work that I would probably talk to you about, I did in the government. So I’d want to be sure that I was confident that I spoke in ways that are government-ally acceptable. [laughs]

Willow: Then let’s dive into this, and I’m going to type while you talk.

Ali: Is my sound quality OK? Because I’m outside.

Willow: Yeah, it’s fine. Then if there’s a pause between when you finish speaking and I ask the next question, it’s because I almost can do transcription in real time. But I usually have about a 30-second delay.

Ali: No worries.

Willow: So that’s why I’m zoned out and still typing on things.

Ali: Wow! I feel a little intimidated by this. This is like big time here, Willow.

Willow: [laughs]

Ali: I mean for crying out loud.

Willow: Well, you know. No, it’s not.

Ali: I wanted some Muppet flail. Yay!

Willow: Does that help? [laughs]

Ali: That made me feel so much better.

Willow: Good. I’m glad. Let’s start off with who are you, and what sorts of things are you into, both hackathons and otherwise?

Interview

Ali: Sure. My name is Ali Llewellyn. I currently work at SecondMuse as a consultant for mass collaboration. Previous to my time at SecondMuse, I worked at NASA in the open innovation program, where we focused on open government, digital strategy, and mass collaboration.

I’ve really carried over my interest in those three items with me to SecondMuse. My real interest is finding effective ways to engage people in public/private partnerships and engage citizens in mass collaboration activities that allow everybody to participate in their government, improve their community, and make a better world. I do work that’s all within that scope, and it’s awesome, [laughs] actually.

Willow: What do you think about hackathons?

Ali: I love hackathons, but I hate the word. I find that when people say hackathon, they tend to mean, “Oh, a bunch of coders sitting in a room, eating pizza, not taking a shower, building geeky things.” When you say hackathons to me, I go immediately to a community of people who figure out how to solve problems. I don’t see it as an event thing. I see it as almost a lifestyle. It’s definitely a community.

In terms of what do I think about hackathons, I think it’s a way that we can harness the collective genius of people all over the world that we really need, and that when you go and immerse yourself in the middle of that environment, it’s amazing, and it’s super encouraging to hear what people have to share and the contributions that they have to make.

Willow: [laughs] How many would you say you’ve attended and what has your goal been at different ones?

Ali: I have attended probably five hackathons, mostly as part of Random Hacks of Kindness. My role in there was, initially, as a government lead in the project. I was attending to see what people were doing with my agency’s data, share the true needs behind my agency’s problems, and help encourage people and share the information they needed to work on that body of work.

Subsequent to that, I got involved in the International Space Apps Challenge, and there have been two, so I’ve attended two. [laughs] My role in that was as the challenge manager and the project manager. Unfortunately, I have never attended a hackathon simply to hack.

I hope Willow will invite me one day, but it’s been really fun to attend it from a side of helping people find the right challenges, find the right data, and make those connections to ensure that their work is used as much as it possibly can be.

Willow: Sidebar. Let’s not forget that. It’s really hard for me to focus on the interview and not be like, “We can build things!” [laughs] You sort of already answered this, but hopefully you’ll add some clarity to it. Do you think of the events you hold as hackathons, and what do you think makes them what they are, whether that’s a hackathon or not?

Ali: Sorry, say that question again. It was unclear to me.

Willow: Do you think of the events that you hold as hackathons? The Space Apps challenge is called an apps challenge. Do you still think of it as being a hackathon?

Ali: Sorry, you’re going out. The Space Apps challenge is called an apps challenge. Do I consider it a hackathon or a differences between those two?

Willow: Yeah.

Ali: No. I consider them totally equivalent. I know that there’s technically a difference between an apps challenge and a hackathon. We wanted to call the International Space Apps Challenge a hackathon, and we were straight up overruled, but we talk about it as a hackathon.

The first year, we called it a codeathon because the government perspective was we could not endorse hackathons. By the second year, we were really excited to see the government start to understand what we meant when we talked about hackathons. They accepted that while we couldn’t put it in the name, that we could talk about it as a hackathon. I use the terms interchangeably, in this context.

Willow: [laughs] You already spoke a little bit about you think the purpose of a hackathon is, but can you tell me a little bit more about that?

Ali: Sure. We talk at NASA about Apollo 13 as the first space hackathon. It was the first space hackathon because people remember the story in Apollo 13 where they dumped out the tools they had on the table, they said we have to get this to fit into this only using this. They had a limited amount of time and a limited amount of resources.

When we talk about hackathons, we talk about solving a problem with the people you have in a room, the smartest people you can find, with a limited amount of time and a limited amount of resources. We try to see hackathons in that light, of, “Here’s what we have, here’s what we need. How can you help us get there?” For us, the key about hackathons in this sense, is doing it collaboratively.

While it’s usually developers, we have really tried to push the model as hackathons aren’t just software developers. Hackathons are makers and entrepreneurs and teachers and artists. Anybody who wants to come and add their perspective and their experience to the problem that needs to be solved.

Willow: What do the projects look like for your event?

Ali: I’m going to limit my talking about Space Apps. Is that acceptable?

Willow: Totally.

Ali: Great. The projects for our events fall in four primary categories. We have software projects, obviously. We have hardware projects that often include Arduinos, 3D printers, anything that you’re building actual hardware. We have data visualization projects, which interestingly enough, tend to be the most popular projects in terms of what people like to work on.

Then we have citizen science efforts, which is usually building a platform that people can use to crowdsource science efforts. Our projects will fall in any of those categories. I’d actually add a fifth category, is that we have a number of projects where we just put a massive dataset out there and say, “Do something awesome with it.” We love to see what happens. I’m going to go down a little path here.

In the traditional government model, you procure work by you write up a statement of what you want to see. You say, “Build me an X that does A, B, and C by this date with this much money.” Part of our vision for how we use hackathons within a government agency is really to say, “Hey government, you don’t always know what’s possible with this data or even what the most awesome thing that could eventually get built is.”

As part of changing the culture of how people use, build, and perceive technology, we’re really trying to push challenges and problem statements that say, “Here’s some data. Apply your brain power to it, and just create something new,” and really trying to seed those things back into the agency with a new perspective. Those are my favorite kinds of projects.

Willow: That’s awesome, yay! What has happened to the projects from the events you’ve been to?

Ali: What has happened to the projects?

Willow: Mm-hmm.

Ali: In terms of post-event?

Willow: Yeah.

Ali: Post-event, the initial part of the process is obviously judging. We go through all the projects. We review them. We take them back to the subject matter experts that initially wrote them, all through the agencies, and talk to them about which solutions they like, why they like them, and what it would take to make those solutions usable and implementable in an agency context.

This is a place yet that we haven’t had the time or the funding to pay as much attention as we’d like to. Basically, what happens is we take those solutions back to the lead. We review them, we make the connection with the team and help build that communication process to say if you could do these things, we could implement your project.

Last time we looked, and I’ll go look up the exact number for you, I think we were thinking we were sitting at about 70 percent of the winning Space Apps projects. So, anything that went to global judging had some impact on the agency. Either it was directly used, it changed the thought space, it was used for education outreach. About 70 percent, I believe, and I’ll double check that, is the number that we were looking at.

Willow: That’s amazing.

Ali: Not nearly enough. We really see it as wanting to fine tune those things more, but it is a beginning.

Willow: Do you think a lot of that has to do with the heavy curation and maintenance, the heavy lifting, that goes on from your end?

Ali: I think it has to do one, with funding. Not enough funding, not enough people, not enough time. Secondly, in NASA, there’s a real, “Nobody who’s a hacker could have anything to say to us about space exploration.” As we bring back awesome projects, we’re helping to change that attitude, where people say, “Well, I can’t use this. Like the only people who could ever have a meaningful commentary on this data are special scientists, all of whom work for us.”

As part of that process of changing that mindset, we’re still just having to show people new ideas again and again and again and again and say, “Do you see the possibilities yet?” It’s definitely making a difference, but we’re not there.

Willow: That’s amazing. I did not understand that.

Ali: Yes.

Willow: What do you think the attendees get out of the event?

Ali: Oh, you’re going to open this little Pandora’s Box, aren’t you? What I love about Space Apps is this. I fully believe that, for sure every nerd kid, but I would argue every single kid, grew up wanting to be an astronaut, wanting to go to space, wanting to visit NASA. I think that all of us at some point thought rockets were awesome and robots are even better.

I think that people, when we invite them to participate in this work, this is saying to them, “You can still have that connection. You are still an explorer, you can still be part of how we explore space. You may not have been an astronaut but whatever you’ve done in your life that’s part of the global body of human knowledge that we need. That’s part of what makes us explorers.”

I think that, number one, what people get out of it is that. They get direct participation in the mission of pioneering the future. Other people have said to us, “Well that’s great, NASA, but what about other agencies?” I fully believe that everybody needs to participate in making their community better. It’s why the National Day of Hacking was so successful, it’s why Random Hacks are so successful.

All these efforts to say, “You don’t just need to observe the problems, you get to be a part of changing them.” I think that’s the number one thing people have gotten out of the event. We have had a number of people who make job connections, who share their resume. We’ve had a team that got into a start-up incubator or two. We’ve had a number of teams go on and build companies together.

All of that is true, but the thing that makes me passionate about Space Apps is that everyone is an explorer and that’s not a shallow tagline that we put on a sticker and plaster all over the place. It’s something real and true and meaningful that I think everybody needs and will re-inspire our nation about space, but about citizenship. How beautiful is that?

Willow: I heart you.

[laughter]

Willow: I’m so glad these don’t have to be formal interviews because I can’t quite go on. You’re wonderful. I heart your heart.

Ali: You’re wonderful.

Willow: Tell me your favorite story from an event.

Ali: My favorite story from an event. I have so many, Willow. I think that probably my favorite story this year is that the first year of Space Apps, I went to Jakarta, Indonesia and participated at the event held at the embassy there. It wasn’t only their first Hackathon, it was their first internally-held tech event ever. We had new staff, we had people who were very unfamiliar with the space and they jumped in, they did great, and I was super proud of them.

My favorite story becomes this year. I went to the event in Singapore and I got on a video chat between Singapore, Jakarta, Indonesia, Antarctica, and I believe the fourth group was in Australia. I watched this team that we had started in Jakarta just blossom. They didn’t only run an amazing event, they ran side events that they were monitoring over video in the villages so that people in the villages could directly participate.

Then they bused those teams in for an award ceremony. They coordinated everything. They got the vision. I think my real favorite story comes from teams like that that we watched step uncertainly into the space, because of the NASA name and that sounded good in terms of a PR story, but then they saw the value.

Not in whatever branding we put on it, but they saw the value in what the community was doing and then they reached out and they’re connecting with everyone and making it happen and taking it way further than I could ever take it from NASA. Taking it way further than we had even asked of them.

Just sitting on that call with them, watching them talk to Antarctica, to the South Pole, watching them lead and listen, I think was probably, this year, one of my proudest moments. That’s probably my number one. The other story I will tell had to do with a team that was in the Dominican Republic this year. It was in, I believe, Azua de Compostela.

We were working with this team in the Dominican Republic that really wanted to participate and we realized, going weeks into the event, that they had very low registration on the website. I kept reaching out to the leads trying to say, “What’s going on, what do you need, how is this happening?” We realized they had almost no personal Internet access available in this community.

Then I start to be worried of how can they participate, how can they collaborate, what can they do together? This group ended up saying we perceive ourselves as hackers and problem-solvers and we don’t need the Internet or computers to make that possible. We’re going to make bracelets, we’re going to build models, we’re going to do all these things to communicate within our community how we can be part of what’s happening there.

I had another team of high school kids in Haiti who had the second Hackathon ever in Haiti, who were reaching out by phone to this team in the Dominican Republic trying to connect with them because they realized they couldn’t do it online but they found other ways to build connections and relationships. Everybody wanted to be a part of shaping how we explored space.

I think that was probably my other proudest story of seeing these people find ways on their own, not led by us at NASA but saying, “We want to be a part of this and if we don’t have the Internet we’re still going to be a part of this and we’re going to make it awesome.” That team in the DR really inspired me.

Willow: That’s amazing.

Ali: Yes, seriously.

Interlude

Willow: It’s good. Do you want to pause for a second while you do that? Go for it.

Ali: I’m just going to go inside so I can plug in. It’s louder inside but there’s electricity.

Willow: OK. We only have two questions left.

Ali: Perfect. Say hi.

Nick: Hi, Willow.

Willow: Hi, how’s it going?

Nick: Good to see you.

Willow: Good to see you, too.

[crosstalk]

Ali: Is the noise really bad in here or is it OK?

Willow: No, it’s OK. It’s alright.

Ali: I will sit right here and we will continue. Go for it.

[TV playing in background]

Interview

Willow: Next question is do you see yourself as part of a wider movement?

Ali: [pause] Oh my goodness. Do I see myself as part of a wider movement? Yes, necessarily. I, as a person from a non-technical background, when I came to go to my first hackathon, my mind kept saying, “I’m not a hacker, I don’t have a role here, I’ll just go and be an observer. ”

My first hackathon in Philly when I met people who said, “No, no, no, we need your skills and your attributes and your experiences to make this awesome,” opened up this whole vision for me that hacking was about all of us. It wasn’t about who could develop, it wasn’t about who were the subject matter experts. It was about us all figuring out together what the problem space looked like and then us all doing our part to move the whole Earth into a better place.

Yes, I definitely see the wider movement of people who are passionate about being a part of making the world better, for sure. Like Willow, who inspires me.

Willow: I’m not going to quote that, but thank you. [laughs] I’ll type it. I have to type the whole thing later, anyway. Do you think that that wider movement is accomplishing that goal of making things better?

Ali: All I got was accomplishing. I hope you can hear me better than I can hear you. I definitely think that the wider movement is accomplishing these things. Nothing makes me angrier than people who are like, “The hackathon movement is burned out, nobody wants to hack anymore, and it’s just stupid, people are just building things that don’t go anywhere. It’s like a two-day love fest with pizza.”

Those things are certainly true in certain spaces. There are events that are run like that and there are people who are feeding, I think, that incorrect public perception. I fully believe that the wider movement is accomplishing these things. One example of where I get really inspired about this is my friend Willow runs this thing called the Digital Humanitarian Group.

I have never been so inspired in what’s possible in the hacking world as I sat on the phone with these people all over the world who are saying, “We specialize in disaster and we specialize in government and we specialize in education and here’s what we’re doing, what are you doing and how can we do those things together?”

Every time I walk through this movement of people who are full of generosity of spirit and who say, “We’re in this to support each other, not to build kingdoms or claim territories, not to say look what I built, but really to say this is why we can be part of the solution and not be part of the problem.” I try to hold out numerous examples of this because it really offends me when I hear people blow off hackathons.

“We don’t want to do a hackathon, that doesn’t accomplish anything.” It doesn’t accomplish anything if that’s how short-sighted your vision is. If you have a vision to say a hackathon isn’t an event, a hackathon is a community of people and it’s the people who shepherd solutions forward because they’re committed to them, not just because they’re a PR stunt. Those are the kind of ways that we’re going to change the world together. How was that?

Willow: You’re great. You’re so eloquent and excited and inspiring.

Ali: It’s my friends at Geeks Without Bounds who taught me everything I know.

Willow: Oh, shucks. You taught us, too.

Ali: Seriously. My first hackathon was that RHoK I went to in Philly and it was Mike Brennan’s first hackathon. It just cracks me up when they did Philly SNAP. It just cracks me up to look back at that and think of how new so many of us are to this process but how committed we are to helping shepherd it forward. It’s all because I have the GWOB coin of power. Oh yeah.

Willow: Those things are so great.

Ali: I’ll say this, too, I’m just telling you, it doesn’t have to be official. You would be super inspired, Willow. We had this event last week at JPL called Launch. Launch is NASA and Nike and State and USAID and it’s collaboratively resourcing technology innovations and shepherding them forward. Here’s why I believe in hackathons.

We did one on water innovations. We did health and energy and waste and all these things. This one was about materials science. They had this amazing woman named Suzanne Lee from the UK who basically has this company called BioCouture, who had figured out how to use a tub full of enzymes to grow clothes. She’s awesome.

Everybody was doing these amazing projects and pitching them, and Suzanne gets up on the stage and basically turns around and says, “Look, these innovations are amazing.” She got invited to be a TED fellow based on this awesome innovation that she built.

She said, “But I don’t want to do that. What I want to do is draw the community together so that we’re not innovating separately. We’re innovating collaboratively. I want to help resource and network an open source movement of makers who are going to use materials as a way to solve problems. I know it’s happening in a one-off way, but nobody is stepping out and creating a space where we could solve problems based on our communal skills.”

I’m crying listening to her. The fact that she sees why that’s important and is willing to lay down that technology innovation to help lead a community into that, that’s why I believe in the hackathon movement. It’s people who have that vision and that clarity to say, “This is why it’s important not only that we innovate, but that we innovate cooperatively, collaboratively, and as a community, and that that’s the only way we’re going to actually change an industry.”

She inspired me. You would have loved it.

Willow: [laughs] That is awesome. Thank you.

Ali: Yay!

Willow: Yay! Do you have anything else you want to…

Ali: What else can I do for you?

Willow: Just let me know if you have anything else that you’re excited about that you want to be sure you have a chance to say.

Ali: I have lots of things that I’m excited about, Willow. Yay!

[laughter]

Wrap Up

Ali: I just need to fill out that one form and email it back to you. Is there anything else you need?

Willow: Nope. That’s it.

Ali: OK.

Willow: Thanks, Ali.

Ali: Do you need me to pester my comrades, or are you going to pester them just fine?

Willow: If you want to pester them, if it’s easy for you. If not, then I’ll pester them in a couple days.

Ali: OK. Well, I will happily help pester them. [laughs]

Willow: OK. Thank you, Ali. It’s good to see you and good to talk to you.

Ali: All right, well, keep in…

Who are you?

Asheesh of OpenHatch!

What do you think about hackathons?

Haven’t been to many things which are now called hackathons. Favorite
They took my subculture and turned it into a theme night.
Before startup enthusiasm and big money swallowed these things up…
2 to 100 people getting together around one project and calling it a hackathon or a sprint. A goal. Working together on a shared goal. Startup lens thoughts are celebrations of individual and slightly group ability to make cool looking throw away software projects that tickle some kind of curiosity that the judges have. Flashy things. No followup except to work on them privately as a group as a startup. Disheartening

How many have you attended?

What role did you fill at each of those (orga, facilitation, mentor, speaker, etc)
In 2008 I went to the Debian conference for the first time. People talking about Debian, how to improve it, and working on those improvements. Every year since them. 2012 went to DebCamp. Only people getting together to work on stuff. Before the event, must explain what it is you are working on, has to be improved. Freely shared after the fact. Another 5 times. Some programming at each of those. 2011 I hid from talks, worked in hacklab on specific tech projects. Still has other people working on it. “Participant for those”
Pycon around python language, plus the sprints after up to 5 days. March 2009. One of the first software conferences, had approval to stay from my employers. ** Peter Fein on that. Knew I’d show up and try out different things. Then learned about Open States, how legislature blows through different states.
Wikimania in 2012 I was one of the co organizers. Every technical event is a “hackathon” for them – style of EriK Mueller. Wikimania is the conference for wikipedia enthusiests, and wikimedia platfrm. The hackathon is two fold in purpose. Distributed groups, paid staff, whatever to work in some way to progress teh software around wikimedia. Automated tool to maintain things, like bots. Inreach aspect, outreach aspect. Open Hatch to co organize for more of an outreach angle. New contributor manuals. Dogmatic of “here is how you set up your computer to run Wikimedia” as opposed to the wishy washy different ways of doing things. Pure encyclopedia aspect.
I’ve lead or co-organized a bunch of “here’s how to get involved with open source” often with a specific gender angle. First one was Sept 25, 2010. How to collaborate on open source, communicate skills. Community understanding, find out about open source projects. As much teaching as doing at the hackathons. Half workshops, half hand-picked projects for attendees. Mentors to make sure people achieve those tasks.
Product nights at Boston and some other cities now. Bring a project connected to Python, create a feeling of welcoming. Envision product structure along with

What do you think the purpose of a hackathon is?

Erik Muller likes to call everything a hackathon. Two different separate goals – inreach and outreach. Hackathon is not well defined. Code sprint has a stated goal of wanting to contribute things to an existing project, fairly consistent use of the term – Debian, Python, KDE, etc. Project nights are “work on your own stuff” with the background role of collaboration and socializing iwth people who like things your like your project.
Open source comes to universities – teaching day, coding day. Not hacking. Negative connotation in many places. DebCamp is tightly defined.

What do projects look like for your event?

Hit control c when you want to stop me
DebConf 2011. In 09 and 10, two people with a bunch of experience noticed there was a lack of ability to review work from folk new to the community. Reviewing and sponsoring code. DebExpo.
Funded by Google Summer of Code, weren’t quite done with it yet,student couldn’t keep working on it. Languished. Probably 08 summer of code project. Interested in newcomer experience, especially on Debian. I was contributed to “someone else’s project” but it was for teh community of 1k plus contributors. DebConf to run well enough to replace teh thing it was supposed to repalce. Community work to get people iterested in maintaining it.
Hackathon part of it that was pivotal to my setting aside time to work on it. Seeing future collaborators. Dev Expo. mentors.debian.net Twisted project is 12 year old project for easy to write, great software makes it do things. “The Engine of Your Internet”
Run monthly-ish events for volunteers to get together and work on things, explore the design of the code. Not just organized by the founder, but in the inreach goal. Had a hugely great time fixing tiny bugs. There’s a famously crotchety guy named Jean-Paul Calderone https://github.com/exarkun
left software dev to become a farmer. Anyway. Stuggling to figure out a bug from 3 years before. Figured out the dev tools working with IRC and i person. Did all the technical stuff, had it reviewed, got put into Twisted. Tapped into my laptop doing paperwork. And his old dude turned around and said “thank you for doing that.” But with longevity, they want more people to be involved with their project

History!

My understanding is about reading a bunch of os mailing lists. 2003 or earlier. Poepole would get together and work on things. See the term bouncing around, confirmed understanding. Then 2010ish I started noticing it showing up in high-flash expensive efforts to encourage people to build exciting looking disposable things. Rolled my eyes at it. The way I interact with anything famous is.. The iPod comes out and comment on slashdot: “No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.”
Tell me your favorite story from an event.
Haven’t ranked them all. First open source comes to Penn or something. Open Source Immersion, the first event in the Open Source Comes to Campus series. Wanted to find novel ways of how to get undergrads aware of and involved with open source. Had OpenHatch. Who signed up for it? I have a secret hidden agenda in making these things more welcoming to make them much more diverse. The sign up page talked in broad strokes, we love this thing, answer these things: what do you know about open source, how you found out about htis website. Wanted to do specific outreach to women in CS. 38% percent were women in general signup. Had too many people signing up for slots. Sorted by excitement level. About 30% of that set were women. That’s my favorite from that event.
Another thing fro that event – 20/30 minutes on history, another 20/30 on Q+A. I’m a free source activist, this person was an undergrad at Penn who was new to open source. As I’m a free software activist, I cared a lot about helping the next generation understand the principles and history behind the movement. After a 20-30 minute lecture on history, followed by 20-30 minutes of Q&A with two volunteer staffers, one student came up to me. She said she was really taken by the open source ethos, but she then told me she fond the term “hack” alienating. That was especially informative to me, since the following day was dedicated to contributing to open source projects but called the “hackathon day” (you can see that here: http://penn.openhatch.org/ ).
I feel alienated by the term “hack” in the talk and in the stuff we’ll be doing tomorrow.

What is that wider movement about?

Is it accomplishing those ends?
Yes but those connections are hard to make. The Grace Hopper open source day is really interesting. There about a week ago. Two or three years ago, Deborah Nicholson and bunch of folk from Sahana (opensource disaster response) participated. Those folk come from more of a hackathon and less of an opensource community background. They found that they struggled to get developers set up with the environment in the amount of tie they had. OpenHatch isn’t flawless either, but we improve it over the years. Certaily seen hackathon like things focused on non profits and techie people can help solve it over a weekend, use open source, customize it. Things that grow the communities around the software. But if they could write about it for the projects would know about the super cool thing going on

Other Things

Things I majored/minored in. Active in the computer club. What I understood computing culture to be. People who wanted to hear more about software, ask questions, find out what other people are up to. Go on random technical adventures together. I have a thing I wanted to do, I knew if I coldn’t do it, I could find someone who could help me just by being in that office. Some of those peopel were transparently about social value. Blogging for Hopkins community. Some were flashy and throw away, like thing for Pandora.
Totally different thing that happened was I had a wacky idea in 2003. Things too seriously: alsamixer doesn’t let you know what is going on until it plays it. Set flags. Wouldn’t it be great if it played music while you changed your volume: salsamixer. Change volume but also modify the name and icon so they know which one they are using. Learned about statemachine in C. Kernel mixers with A and S. More seriously, other people had a week long project to rewrite memory thing. CS research people who hung out there, learned a bunch about tools. How memory management works. Week long hackathon. Sure learned a lot.
I a way, hackathons strike me as what would happen if people who weren’t immune to this idea of background community wanted it but didn’t know how to do it. Make temporary events to bring people together. Background community.
When you open teh GIMP, the file extension is XCF, why would it be extention? eXperimental Computing Facility. Another resource: http://coe.berkeley.edu/engnews/spring03/4S/XCF.html
Needed their own space, came up with their own stuff, including a file. Then it was a group of people . After they graduated, it spun down. The open .. movement, created a space that anyone could join even if they weren’t those people. OCF is still around. XEF left a shrine to their existence on computers in this extension. More info about XCF http://www.salon.com/2000/12/04/xcf/
Salon article, became an amateur collector of these things. What is their computer group up to? How often do they meet, what are they up to? Etc. Now I use the same thing to improve user groups.