Is a Hackathon of interest at all to Language Developers?

Hi,

I'm posting into this forum because I know more developers read this one, so please read on, your opinion is very valuable for us.

Earlier this year we ran a hackathon in San Francisco during SDL Innovate. We put quite a lot of effort into seeing who could attend and who could not, and as most of our developers are in Europe we unsurprisingly had plenty of comments that if the event was in Europe then it would be easier to attend (we did have some Language Developers attend that though and I believe they got a lot from it). So, in September we are planning to run a Hackathon in Europe, in Amsterdam.... hopefully you are all aware of this as it's been advertised in here and we sent mailers to all the registered developers.

To register for the event you go here and click on register.

Unfortunately so far we don't have anyone registered from the Language Community, so this of course makes us wonder if there is any interest at all?  So I've got two questions I'm pondering with:

  1. Are you guys interested in a Hackathon or is this something more interesting for independent professional developers?  I mean professional because I'm assuming you mostly have day jobs and developing is just part of your role and you do it because it helps you integrate your systems and create tools plugins that help you in your day jobs.  Taking time out for this isn't interesting or you don't have the control over your time for something like this.
  2. What can we do that would be of benefit to a developer community like this?  What can we provide to help you improve your skills and get more out of the solutions we are providing?

You can see I'm of the opinion we don't have too many full time developers working for themselves in here. But perhaps I'm wrong and you're all too busy to see the things we are doing to try and help grow the community.

I'm, we're, interested in your feedback so I hope you can take the time to respond and help us get a handle on what we should be doing that would be of more interest for the Language Community of Developers.

Looking forward to your feedback...

Parents
  • Hi guys,

    I'd like to thank you for all your feedback so far, and if anyone has anything else to add (especially if it's different) then we'd be very pleased to read it.  I think it's clear from all of this feedback that there are things we can do in the future that would be more appropriate for this audience so we're going to go away and think about this.  In the meantime we are cancelling the Hackathon part of the Open House week in Amsterdam.  It's an expensive event to run, and without sufficient interest it makes little sense to do it.

    So apologies to  who seems to be the only person interested at the moment.

    BUT!!  Don't forget we still have the two days where we are open and anyone can come along to ask any question they like, get some training etc.  I'll be there (not that I can help with the developer stuff!!) and so will  and we're looking forward to seeing anyone who can make it.

    So bring your laptop, bring your questions, and I'm sure these two days will be a great opportunity to progress anything you are working on, to get started if you are just thinking about it and would like a kick start, and to enjoy a bit of technical cameraderie in a friendly environment where you can learn as much as you've got time for!

Reply
  • Hi guys,

    I'd like to thank you for all your feedback so far, and if anyone has anything else to add (especially if it's different) then we'd be very pleased to read it.  I think it's clear from all of this feedback that there are things we can do in the future that would be more appropriate for this audience so we're going to go away and think about this.  In the meantime we are cancelling the Hackathon part of the Open House week in Amsterdam.  It's an expensive event to run, and without sufficient interest it makes little sense to do it.

    So apologies to  who seems to be the only person interested at the moment.

    BUT!!  Don't forget we still have the two days where we are open and anyone can come along to ask any question they like, get some training etc.  I'll be there (not that I can help with the developer stuff!!) and so will  and we're looking forward to seeing anyone who can make it.

    So bring your laptop, bring your questions, and I'm sure these two days will be a great opportunity to progress anything you are working on, to get started if you are just thinking about it and would like a kick start, and to enjoy a bit of technical cameraderie in a friendly environment where you can learn as much as you've got time for!

Children
No Data