Revision #13Recommend a SolutionFork
RHoK Weekend Info
- Want to work on this project? Contact Chad Badiyan - chad.badiyan@secondmuse.com
- (Chad is located in Berlin. Check what time it is there.)
- We have a dev server set up for each team that wants to work. Contact Chad (above) to gain access.
Summary:
There is a lot of room for improvement here on RHoK.org. In direct response to your requests, this year we will be opening up development of RHoK.org to the community. This will start in the form of a featured problem for RHoK in June.
We believe that in order for RHoK to be successful, RHoK.org needs to be a valuable and useful platform for collaboration, event organizing, problem defining, and sustained work on solutions.
All RHoK.org code is now open source and will be hosted at GitHub. RHoK.org is Drupal-based and will be distributed under GNU-GPL.
Any team who wishes to work on RHoK.org will be given access to an instance of a development server during the RHoK on June 2nd and 3rd. We hope that this will allows teams to get right to work and not waste time dealing with launching their own dev server.
The RHoK core team will act as the core maintainer for website development and will incorporate positive changes made by the community.
The lead subject matter expert, Chad Badiyan from SecondMuse, will be present at RHoK Berlin. He will also be moderating the IRC channel for this featured problem on Freenode: #rhok_website so teams can participate around the world. He will be supported by our current lead RHoK.org developer.
While there are many small things that need work and focus on the website, we want you to think big and design new, useful components of the site. How do you want to manage events, problems and solutions? How would you like to collaborate and find others with the skills that match your project? What is the best way to incorporate commenting systems and social media?
We encourage you to take up a focus area, communicate with Chad your goals, and get to work. If other teams express interest in a similar area, we will make sure they can join you. Below is a list of suggested problems to work on.
Major Tasks
- Conveying RHoK Impact and Value - The front page of RHoK.org does not clearly and concisely convey the value of RHoK: What are the success stories? Where are the next RHoK events? How big is the community? Where have solutions been implemented? Come up with a modifiable, updatable visualization to be placed on the front page of RHoK.org. We believe an ideal location for this is a replacement of the current “Latest Activity” section.
- Skill-to-Problem Matching - How can we better pair hackers and their skills with the projects that need them? How can hackers find projects that are both in their area of interest and their area of expertise? How should user profiles be reconstructed to make this as user friendly as possible?
- RHoK Community Portal - The current community page does not have a clear value. What would be a better use of this space? Can this be a visualization of the RHoK community? A place to find like-minded hackers to form teams and work on projects outside of the biannual RHoK events?
- RHoK Event Management / Event Lead Portal - What would make you want to plan and manage an event through RHoK.org? What features of event planning does it lack? How can the RHoK.org CMS be improved to allow for even greater ability of the community to share problems, event info and build relationships with each other?
Minor Tasks
- Highlighting Great Content - RHoK Success Stories, Guest Blogs, “The Hack” - these are all ongoing blog series. But there is no way to easily find all of these stories. Sure, we can tag them and put them in the sidebar - that is easy and may be sufficient. But maybe you have an even better idea.
- Incorporate Social Media & Improve Commenting - The commenting system is minimal and the social media integration is nonexistent. What is the role of commenting for the RHoK community, and how can it be leveraged to improve communication and collaboration through RHoK.org?
- Better Blogging - The current modules used to create blogs and pages on RHoK.org can be cumbersome. Perform a usability analysis and improve this system.
SecondMuse, the operational lead for RHoK, will continue to manage the community development of the website after RHoK. We will also likely offer paid work to teams that can present cohesive visions for improvements on RHoK.org that fall outside of the scope of sustained volunteer development.
Making RHoK.org the resource that the community needs is vital to seeing all of the community’s hard work result in stronger and more sustained impact in the real world. We look forward to working with all of you to create the best platform we can.
Next Steps and Sustainability:
SecondMuse, the operational lead for RHoK, is the core maintainer for the site and will fold in changes as well as potentially offer contract employment opportunities to grand visions with good designs and implementations in order to fold them more completely into RHoK.org.
Qualitative Impact:
RHoK.org is the platform through which projects are seen through to impact. This is a foundation for all RHoK projects.
Quantitative Impact:
Thousands of members of the RHoK community that use RHoK.org to post problems, solutions, and form teams.
Problem Definition Category:
Event Group: