Hackfest2015

This page details the planning of an Inkscape Hackfest in April 2015

Discusson

See the Board_Meetings page for minutes of past discussions and the time and place of the next discussion.

Description

A hackfest! We will work on Inkscape bugs, new features, and packaging as well as website issues; in fact anything that can benefit from developers and users being physically in the same space.

Maybe even some Gtk+ issues: http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/GTK%2B_Issues

The Pitch

Inkscape is a free, fully open source, community-developed, socially owned software program that allows everyone to explore their creativity. Digital artists use it to produce professional quality work. Engineers and scientists use it to create clear drawings to explain their ideas. Everyday people use it to create simple drawings, develop their design skills, and just have fun.

We need your help to further improve the program so many people love, and make sure it has a bright future!

Our dedicated volunteer Inkscape developers are spread across the globe and rarely have the chance to meet face-to-face. Thanks to technology, we are able to work remotely on most things, but we've noticed that in-person meetings bring about stronger relationships, quicker solutions, and more creative results.

Being together in one room also allows us to work on things that are harder to do on-line: designing a new plugin/extension system, teaming up to squash particularly nasty bugs, authoring better user documentation, and planning where to take Inkscape development in the future.

We will be meeting before the Libre Graphics Meeting (April 29 to May 2, 2015) in Toronto for three days of intense hacking.

Please consider donating a few bucks to help cover travel, room, and board so our available volunteer developers can attend the hackfest in person? It's an investment in Inkscape which should produce big benefits for all its users and help us make the product the very best it can be.

• Organizations that use Inkscape to draw testimonials from: http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/UsedBy
• Some of the nifty new features: http://inkscapetutorials.wordpress.com/category/0-91-new-features/
• TODO: Needs some photos of our developers, or images of what we'll be working on

All donations are fully tax deductable to the extent permitted by law. Suggested donation amounts:

• $5 –
• $50 – Covers meals & incidentals for one developer
• $120 – Equivalent to half of a year's subscription to a proprietary drawing program.
• $500 – Business level
• $1000 - Sponsors a nearby US/Canada developer
• $2000 – Sponsors a developer from afar
• $5000 - Corporate level. [Extra perks]
• Other – Whatever you can spare. Every donation helps!

To make your donation, (insert here how they do that)

Thanks so much for being an investor in Inkscape and contributing to help bring the developers together in Toronto. We appreciate your commitment to free, fully open source, community-developed, socially owned software, and your vision for Inkscape. We are grateful to have you on our team!

Date

Sunday, April 26^th through Tuesday, April 28^th; just before the Libre Graphics Meeting 2015 (LGM2015) which takes place from April 29^th through May 2^nd 2015 (note: email states 30th through 2nd but an email on libre-graphics-meeting states that one day has been added at the beginning).

Schedule

A sketch of what might happen on hackfest days, 2 or 3 days of things should be planned.

a) Social meeting b) Pre-lunch presentations c) Lunch d) Pure hacking e) Dinner f) Late night hacking

Location

Toronto at the same venue as LGM. We have a room reserved for us that can hold up to 30 people. It has movable tables with built in power outlets and a 40" TV in lieu of a projector.

Budget

We had 8 attendees at the last LGM, and are hoping for perhaps 12 people this time. Roughly, assuming costs will be in the $1000-2000 range per person for travel, room, and board, that gives a budget of $9-18k

To get more specific we'll need to:

 * Estimate of hotel costs per night:  $50 per person for shared double in two star hotel, $30 per person in hostel
 * Estimate of airfare costs from Europe ($900), West Coast ($750), East Coast ($300), etc.
 * Plan a daily food/incidentals stipend amount (~$30)

Cost estimate for 3 days pre-LGM in Toronto:

* From Paris: airfare $900 + $200 hotel + $100 food = $1200
* From Boston: airfare $300 + $200 hotel + $100 food = $600
* From Zurich: airfare $900 + $200 hotel + $100 food = $1200
* From Los Angeles: airfare $750 + $200 hotel + $100 food = $1150

We're considering a model similar to what we did with reimbursement limits for the GSoC reunion:

* Up to $2000 each for Inkscape developers who have contributed for 3+ years and > 200 commits  (About 18 developers qualify, not all currently active)
* Up to $1500 each for Inkscape developers who have contributed for 2+ years and > 100 commits  (About 17 additional qualify)
* Up to $1000 each for Inkscape developers who have contributed for 1+ year and > 50 commits   (About 24 additional qualify)
* Up to $500 each for any Inkscape contributor listed in AUTHORS file with at least 10 commits by Jan 1, 2015 (About 50 additional qualify)

We should also consider sponsoring Inkscape contributors who are not developers (translators,etc.).

Sponsors

Finding local companies who might like to sponsor the event, help out with feeding people or bringing them to attend can be documented here.

maybe if we had some kind of form letter folks could give to their employer i save you this much $$ per year in adobe whatever license fees. would you support my work for this company by contributing some percentage of that back to the inkscape project

• http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/UsedBy

Sponsors' interests

It would help a lot if we have specific ideas about how to compensate sponsors, what they would be "buying".

Interests and offerings

• PR among users
  • News item with clear marking of who sponsored the event
• Improving a product that they ship
  • Work on specific bugs may be very tricky
  • offer to work on general code improvement (focussing on refactoring/ease for devs to develop new things, for example) seems good
• Improving a product that many of their employees use
  • Work on specific bugs may be very tricky
  • offer to work on general code improvement (focussing on stability, for example) seems good
• PR among coders
  • Clear PR during event
  • Making contacts with development team
  • News item with clear marking of who sponsored the event

Action items

Date	Owner	Item
15 sep 2014	Karen Sandler (SFC)	[DONE] Could inquire if RH and Google can sponsor
15 sep 2014	Bryce	[DONE] Get the fundraising doc posted on our website
15 sep 2014	Bryce	Once we have things more nailed down: inquire with samsung for hackfest sponsorship
15 sep 2014	Martin Owens	Hear back from LGM about Torronto co-sponsorship
15 sep 2014	ScislaC	Contact userbase for interest in the hackfest
15 sep 2014	ScislaC	[DONE] Get a list of [companies using inkscape]
15 sep 2014	Tav	[DONE] Summarize and mail devlist
20 sep 2014	Tav	[DONE] Set up a new wiki page for planning second Hackfest w/ RedHat
20 sep 2014	Bryce	[DONE] Draft a preliminary promotional fundraising blurb
20 sep 2014	ryanlerch	Work on a video for fundraiser
20 sep 2014	everyone	[DONE] Consider indiegogo vs. hosting our own paypal donation page
15 oct 2014	everyone	[DONE] Decide plan for implementing website/db support for fundraiser campaigns
15 oct 2014	karen	Can we use Inkscape's existing paypal account or should we set up a separate one for fundraising
15 oct 2014	karen	If we set the product_id on the donation page, can SFC provide us with a summary (or the raw data) with this info, so we can tally hackfest contribs?
15 oct 2014		Mockup layout on Staging for a fundraiser/donation page (using text from Pitch)
12 nov 2014		Decide where in inkscape.org's site menu to place Hackfest related pages
12 nov 2014		Create a Hackfest page in the main website
12 nov 2014		Write a page for Toronto transportation for A) how to get to/from airport, and B) how to get around the city
12 nov 2014		Write a set of posts for Inkscape blog / news feed (to be finalized + published as the event nears)
12 nov 2014		Find someone local to Toronto to help with local logistics
12 nov 2014		Translate the Hackfest Donation page to French
12 nov 2014		Translate the Hackfest Donation page to Spanish (and/or other major languages)

Brainstorm area

Put things here that you think could use a bit of discussion/thought.

Places to announce the fundraiser, once it's set up?

• Inkscape's g+ page
• inkscape-users@
• twitter
• dA
• the website
• <karenesq> I bet LWN would be interested
• <doctormon> Possible interest: http://zipfelchappe.readthedocs.org/en/latest/
• <ryanlerch> i can promote on inkscapetuts and fedoramagazine too

Tasks to tackle

What can we hack on? To me (Johan) what seems nice are tasks that become more managable/fun/... and with higher chance of completion (maximum one day) when done in a group. Before determining specific tasks, what kind of tasks should we try to tackle?

• Fleshing out documentation
  • Code documentation
  • Architecture docs
  • Coding howtos
  • Tutorials
  • User documentation
  • Translation of same
• A bug that requires knowledge of large part of codebase.
• Writing test cases
• Simple repetitive refactoring or code clean up that can be parallelized and may not be so much fun alone. Examples:
  • make sure every file contains standardized and correct copyright notice,
  • eradicate all use of gboolean/TRUE/FALSE,
  • move towards C++11 by =delete on copy-constructors instead of making them private+undefined).
• A more complicated refactoring that requires discussion.
  • Conversion of build system
  • Performance optimizations
  • Coordinate flip.
• A feature that can be split into parallelizable tasks possibly with different skills required, for example:
  • combination of UI, backline math stuff, usability/behavior stuff.
  • Infrastructure setup
• Design / strategy collaboration
  • SVG 2 fallbacks
  • New plugin/extension system
• Planning
  • Post-1.0 roadmap definition
  • Conference attendance for upcoming year
  • Future hackfests :-)
• Pictures pictures pictures
  • Try to make nice pictures that show what has happened. Can then also be used for PR for next edition.

For the drunk hacking sessions:

• Fun stuff, obviously. So perhaps a quirky feature, and see next day if it lead to something usable.

Participants

We aim for around 10 people.

Who do we expect to join (not remote), what kind of people?

• Seasoned Inkscape developers? Yes.
• More recently joined Inkscape developers? Yes.
• Coders unfamiliar with Inkscape? Possibly one or two. Local students, e.g.
  • Good programmers with experience?
  • New programmers with little experience?
• Users? Probably none that don't fall in other categories
  • Graphic designers?
  • Technical drawers?
  • 'Powerpoint' figure drawers?

We can make a list of possible tasks for each of these groups.

For the first hackfest, I (Tav) would keep it open to anyone, but only promote it to people already familiar with the Inkscape code base.

Help for newcomers

• Provide a VM image with: Inkscape's trunk ready to compile. Preferably with clang so one can run clang's static analyzer and quickly get a nicely formatted report of potential bugs that are generally easy to fix (i.e. null-ptr checking, etc).
• List of simple tasks

Non-coding stuff

Some ideas for socializing and getting away from PC screen

• Karaoke :)
• Board/card games
• Run around town
• Movie
• Pub
• Take a group picture!!!