Indic Wikimedia Hackathon Bhubaneswar 2024
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Introduction
editThe Indic Wikimedia Hackathon Bhubaneswar 2024 is an event organized by the Indic MediaWiki Developers User Group (aka, Indic-TechCom) in collaboration with the Odia Wikimedians User Group. It will take place in Bhubaneswar during 20-22 December 2024 (19 Dec is Day 0).
Wikimedia hackathons are spaces for developers, designers, content editors, and other community stakeholders to collaborate on building technical solutions that help improve the experience of contributors and consumers of Wikimedia projects. The event is intended for:
- Technical contributors active in the Wikimedia technical ecosystem, which includes developers, maintainers (admins/interface admins), translators, designers, researchers, documentation writers, etc.
- Content contributors who have an in-depth understanding of technical issues in their home Wikimedia projects, such as Wikipedia, Wikisource, Wiktionary, etc., and can give developers their insights as to how the tech aspects should work.
- Contributors to any other FOSS community or have participated in Wikimedia events in the past, and would like to get started with contributing to Wikimedia technical spaces.
Task and program design
editDrawing from our experiences with the past few hackathons, we are introducing a slightly revised program format and participation structure for the upcoming event. Traditionally, tasks are published a few days before the event begins, and participants then select their preferred tasks on the first day. While this approach works, it poses a challenge as some participants may find themselves without tasks that align closely with their skill sets or interests. Additionally, although bugs can be addressed during the hackathon, measuring collective impact can be challenging. To address this, we have curated the tasks for this hackathon in such a way that a set of tasks collectively contributes to the substantial development of a tool or workflow, thereby progressing it to a stable version. We hope that this approach not only fosters engagement during the event but also encourages continued participation post-event, allowing developers to collaborate further on tasks until they reach completion.
Scholarships
edit- The scholarship will cover travel, accommodation, food, and other incidentals incurred for your participation.
- For participation in the hackathon, 30-35 scholarships are available.
- The deadline for scholarship application 2 November 2024.
- You can fill out the scholarship application at Google Form.
- Scholarships will be finalized and decision emails on or before 16 November 2024.
Application guidance
editIn the scholarship application, you’ll be asked to indicate the task or the broader project you’d like to work on, and optionally if you have any thoughts on how to do it. The scholarships section of the page contains a list of curated hackathon-able tasks that participants can leverage and select from. However, participants are also welcome to submit their own tasks if they prefer to work on something different.
List of curated hacking tasks/projects: Google Spreadsheet
The applicants may also choose to work on something else other than the proposed, but a clear description of the task along with the problem statement is expected. This doesn’t need to be perfect (or even correct!), but the intent of thinking about implementation would benefit your application. Here is an example of good task description and not-so-good description (for self proposed tasks):
- Not-so-good example: I want to work on improving the template experience on my Wikipedia.
- Good example (hypothetical): I want to work on the process of importing templates from another wiki to my Wikipedia, and auto-linking them to Wikidata items. The process currently is tedious and some kind of user script or bot can help the process.
Please note that the task or project you choose to work on will not impact your chances of receiving a scholarship. Applications will be evaluated based on your overall interest (motivation statement), your plan for the hackathon (thought process and problem-solving), and collaboration.
Selected participants will need to spend ~2-3 hours on pre-event work, such as attending an orientation session, reviewing the code base of the project, getting familiar with the ecosystem, etc. This provides necessary guidance to all the participants and brings everyone onto the same page before the event starts.
Program
edit| Timings | Activity |
|---|---|
| Day 1 - 20 Dec | |
| 10:00 to 11:00 am | Welcome and projects introduction |
| 11:00 am to 1:30 pm | Hacking time |
| 1:30 to 2:30 pm | Lunch |
| 2:30 to 4:30 pm | Hacking time |
| 4:30 to 5:00 pm | Break |
| 5:00 pm to 6:00 pm | Getting started with Language tech by Amir Aharoni & Abijeet Patro |
| 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm | [Optional] Hacking time (space will be open) |
| Day 2 - 21 Dec | |
| 10:00 am to 11:30 am | Hacking time[1] |
| 11:30 am to 12:00 pm | Tea break |
| 12:00 pm to 01:30 pm | Hacking time |
| 01:30 pm to 2:30 pm | Lunch |
| 2:30 pm to 4:30 pm | Hacking time |
| 4:30 pm to 5:00 pm | Group photo + tea break |
| 5:00 pm to 6:00 pm | Technical consultations and priorities |
| 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm | [Optional] Hacking time (space will be open) |
| Day 3 - 22 Dec | |
| 07:00 am to 9:00 am | [Optional] Social activity |
| 10:00 am to 1:00 pm | Hacking time[1][2] |
| 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm | Lunch |
| 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm | Hacking wrap-up and next steps planning |
| 4:00 pm to 5:30 pm | Showcase + closing remarks |
Event organization
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Organizersedit
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Organizationsedit
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Contact
editFor any questions, please reach out to us on the Meta-Wiki talk page or via email at contact
indicmediawikidev.org