Highlighting and promoting Chi Hack Night groups & projects

The surveys didn't indicate this, but the questions that folks ask after the 101 seem to indicate that they'd like a bit more information about breakout groups: what they are about, what tools/platforms they use, what skillsets they need, how to start a new breakout group etc.

That people want a little more info about breakout groups in writing makes sense-- there are a lot of different projects going on a Chihacknight and it can be tough to choose. Conscientious people also want to make sure that they aren't barging in on a breakout group that doesn't need their help.

That second point speaks to what research has revealed about the priorities of breakout group leaders: it can be awkward for them to spend time onboarding/welcoming new people who they don't really need and who might not stick around. It's especially inconvenient if these new people arrive after the 101 and they have to onboard a second wave.

The GitHub solution that we agreed to test last night tries to address both of these issues-- it would provide a way for breakout group leaders to easily include more details about their projects including skillsets needed but also gives them the option to "hide" themselves as a closed issue if they don't need help (but can easily reactivate themselves if that changes).

Feedback about GitHub solution from breakout group leaders coming soon! Hopefully we can get some good ideas from testing over the next week.

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Thanks, Ethan. This was Kevin Rose's question. Did you also reply to him?

Steve Ediger

773-920-7350 (google voice)

505-426-7088 (mobile)

I'm somebody who does not stay for the breakouts but has an interest and spends time in the Slack and now Loomio during the days between hacknights. This helps me build my own understanding and offers the opportunity to reach out to engage of share ideas. A few weeks ago Alex Soble shared some work he was doing to better understand who attends hack night. https://github.com/alexsoble/chi-hack-night-intros I think Ethan is taking that to a deeper level.

It would be good to try to understand who is attending, who keeps attending, who attends once, but not again. Not just on a weekly basis, but a historical basis. This represents a huge community of talent for civic engagement.

If such info were available, the next step would be two-fold. Try to encourage a growing percent to sign onto Slack, Loomio or other places, like Twitter, and engage with each other, while building visibility for the overall group. As that happens, try to figure out what percent of repeaters and one-timers visit the chihacknight.org site, the slack page and/or Loomio in between weekly events.

If only a few people are doing this, then putting more info about breakout groups on line won't result in more people coming to the groups ready to contribute. However, if #chihacknight can help build habits of on-line learning, connecting and collaboration within the tech/communications sector, they mobilize a powerful force for making good things happen, and for helping each other.

How to do this might be a topic for another Loomio thread.

I have stubbed out a new section of the site to highlight these projects: https://chihacknight.org/projects.html

Each project page will include:

• names, pics & bio the volunteers that worked on it
• links to media and presentations
• how did chi hack night help this project?
• what was the impact of this project?
• what did you learn from this project?
• topic tags

Other ideas?

I think the history of a project could be kind of interesting. I know I suck at documenting our stuff, but I always think "one day... "

I'd like to finalize this list of questions during the leadership meeting tomorrow and send out a survey email.

I've pre-selected some projects I think have been the highest-profile, but there are definitely others that can be added. I plan on making the survey form public for anyone to submit. For that, we should have some minimum requirements for acceptance.

Got a first draft of the form here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdk7Yxx_K1rjOOZOqooRjv9FawbntUFqLwLd_jiYJHjf4nLrA/viewform

Feeback welcome!

In the "A little bit about you section", maybe have an optional "public contact link", e.g. if someone wants their twitter handle, linked-in profile, github profile, personal website etc. to be published on the project page similar to what we do in the "About the Author" section at the bottom of blog posts.

How would we feel about also making the Picture URL optional?

@derekeder1 ^{^}

thanks @kbrose. Added the contact question.

Also, for the picture, some image will be required (for formatting purposes). It doesn't have to be your face