Wikimedia Hackathon 2021/Feedback

This is a backup of the input entered by hackathon participats at https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/WM_Hackathon_2021_Feedback

Backup content

Thank you all for joining the Wikimedia remote hackathon 2021! <3

As we’re always trying to improve the quality of Wikimedia events, we would love to hear how the event was for you. Feel free to answer the following questions, and add your username at the end of your answers, but you don't have to.

How was your general experience during the hackathon?

• It was great to talk to some people I haven't seen in quite a while!
• The WorkAdventure platform is superb AWESOME! It gives me the feel attending the In-person event!
• It was really good. I especially enjoyed watching Eurovision with everyone at the end of a great day of hacking.
• I loved Workadventure, and would like to hang out more there. But we also had connection problems with it.
• the work adventure bit was gre
• Work adventure was a good plattform to meet people and I liked the Hackathon and the people with I talked to in the last days.
• Awesome, I loved WorkAdventure, did a quite good job in providing a conference feeling, meeting people although there's room for improvement
• WorkAdventure was cool but I have to say I enjoyed text chat -based participation on multiple simultaneous channels too
• I liked the idea of WorkAdventure, but couldn't participate because there was no text chat
• It felt much more organised than last year and was very enjoyable
• I felt like really socialized thanks to WorkAdventure and I am full of motivation after seeing all amazing people doing amazing staff
• Workadventure was great, gives a much closer experience to in person events.
• Like everyone else, I liked WorkAdventure. It even simulated the feeling of nervousness of walking into a room full of people and not knowing who to talk to! (It did also crash a few times and make my laptop get pretty hot.)
• The overall experience was really wonderful!
• workadventure and Eurovision and the dog walk were so great to have . Nice and long talks with friends in the workadventure rooms. Nice to hsve the schedule in there!
• Excellent. A few minor technical hindrances but nothing preventing a relevant participation.

What are the things that you found especially great and you would like to keep for future events? (sessions, discussions, tools, formats, etc.)

• The people :D
• WorkAdventure, Livestream
• The livestream to follow along was cool - this might be something we want to keep, even if we'd go back to real life events one day
• Making online participation possible, also if there are some people meeting at a venue.
• The showcase +1 +1
• WorkAdventure and our community!
• I like the choice of tools and your overall arrangements very much. Everything running smootly, and in a relaxed athmosphere.
• I really liked the etherpad for common notes in some of the sessions
• WorkAdventure and the YouTube stream were great.
• WorkAdventure, Sessions. Piano concert (if feasible :] )
• I especially appreciated the effort put to use FLOSS tools and services. It certainly wasn't the most straightforward choice, but the team was bold enough to tackle the challenge. 👏 WorkAdventure was fun.

What could be improved for future online events?

• Integrate the separate Jitsi rooms into workadventu.re, if possible. (Ah, comment below make sense.)
• Keep the separate link to the Jitsi rooms so people can join if the workadventure thingy doesn't work for them. (Workadventure needs to be kept though :D )
• Timezones are really weird and some couldn't attend most of the sessions
• I would like to learn how these challenges can be turned to advantages. I love timezones, but they separate people. How to keep alive conversations over timezones?!?
• More detailled Introduction to some topics
• Trying to keep track of the timezones. +1
• Ad-hoc creation of "rooms" with Jitsi or similar in them inside a world like WorkAdventure. Possibility to peek in easier, perhaps like SpatialChat where if you move closer you will hear the other people louder
• Text chat with threaded conversations like Discourse?
• Jitsi meets chould have been recorded too for future reference
• Timezones are really weird and some couldn't attend most of the sessions +1, Maybe have different sessions hosted and facilited by people on different timezones?
• Showcase the work of the past year, perhaps with volunteer journalists "interviewing" teams
• Moderation for sessions that keep track of time, people talking, summing comments up and facilitating the common etherpad
• Make sure there are brakes between the talks (in theory there where 5 min but in practice that time was mostly used up, maybe 15 min brakes every now and then would be better)
• In group discussions maybe motivate participants to enable video to create the feeling of a more realistic hack event :) (maybe find a better tool that can support this?)
• The confusion of Telegram, IRC, etc. was a bit confusing. It'd be wonderful if one day there could be a unified platform (Matrix?) on which people could all interact in the same way (the bridging sometimes is confusing).
  • +1
  • I agree, but this is not really a Hackthon specific issue
• Timezone issues: some timezones were left out in the cold. I know this is because people in those TZs didn't step up and organize any sessions, and I don't know how to solve that. Maybe reach out to people to ask them to fill empty times of the day? +1
• I felt there were some issues with Jitsi like video breaking now and then. Also, during the showcase there was no easy way to identify who's presenting (in case I couldn't hear the speaker announcement) as Jitsi doesn't highlight who's sharing the screen. It would be nice if Jitsi did that.
• having a coding workshop for newbies and a eorkshop on "how to join "IRC" "pour les nulles" with a step by step approach
• Where participants doesn't request a non-recorded room beforehand (it's important to keep this option of course), recording all sessions, log related text conversations like chat in Jitsy, and systematically linking minutes, on demand video video, etc. within the shedule for posterity
• Being able to see who is in which video/voice chat room without having to enter a room (?)
• Being able to zoom out to see what's happening / who is around in other corners of the workadventure map
• Encourage speakers to enable their camera. Needs to be re-enabled in jitsi when screen sharing is started.

If you’d like to leave a “thank you note” to some people you interacted with during the event, you can also do it here!

• Thank you Chico for running this amazing session, Yuvi for incredible magic in early morning and Andrew for keeping it all together fabulously! Everyone in the recon team, and you magnificent organizers!
• Thank you to the organizers for all the work done in the background! This felt way "closer" (running into people and having a video call popping up) than last time, and the cute 8bit world
• Thank you Lucas for sharing the live coding experience for Sparql queries – The events query will come to life in Wikidocumentaries as soon as possible, unfortunately not today.
• Thanks to Bryan Davis for evangelizing the hackathon and pulling more people in :)
• Dog Walk session: Thanks to the people who went on a walk with us, really enjoyed the parks/rivers/cats :-)
  • +1
• Thank Lucas for piano concerts! +1
• Thanks to all the organizers for running a wonderful show and Lucas for the melodious concert! :)
• thanks Lucas, auregann, chico and all others!
• I seize the opportunity to thanks the whole organizing team❣️ Big KUDO! A special thank to all those who where involved in leading the various I participated in, as well as those I couldn't attend. And thanks to all people that took part in the event, with a special think for those I had the opportunity to discuss with, be it through a videoconference or text chat. It's been a real pleasure to be part of this event.
• Lea!