Grants:TPS/01tonythomas/FOSSASIA2017/Report

Event name

FOSSASIA 2017, Singapore

Participant connections

We had User:SSethi_(WMF) over there running a talk on the second day, and running the workshop as well on the third day as planned - which was great. We aligned our talks and workshops in a way that they go one after the other from the basics to the advanced extension workshop as planned. I could also meet and spend a lot of quality time with User:John_Vandenberg listening to how he implemented Google Code In type program for kids in Indonesia. The workshops on the third day didnt get enough participants as we expected, even though we repeatedly publicized it with printouts, shoutouts in slack channel, twitter etc. We got bunch of school kids, to whom we explained GCI and three attendees for the workshop in particular with whom we explained the Wikimedia movement and shared the workshop agenda as well. I am also happy that I could occasionally help User:SSethi_(WMF) setup Mediawiki dev environment in her machine (she had a vagrant install though), following How_to_become_a_MediaWiki_hacker Doc to evaluate the documentation as well.

Outcome

Option 2: Learning Pattern: What is one useful learning pattern you can share with the Wikimedia movement?

I am not completely sure if this should go under this topic - but we built couple of items before the workshop so that it would go smooth. From my limited experience of running hackathons, I find that it is always better to have a written agenda on a wiki and pass it on to participants so that they can follow the steps asynchronously. This would also help in understanding which documentation of Mediawiki development they would hit, and understand what is wrong with the documentation as well.

I prepared this doc: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:01tonythomas/Hackathons/ExtensionHack which had step by step information on the workshop agenda. We could give it to the couple of participants that turned up, and pasted it in the printed flyers as well - but sadly we never got the required participation for the event. I am sure that someone else running a similar workshop can make use of the same as the steps are more or less straightforward.

The expected result from the hackathon was couple of participants building an actual extension as per the docs, but sadly it never happend due to the limitation of the participants there. Probably the event failed in attracting local participants (University students, for example who would be potential GSoC/Outreachy participants) and all attendees were speakers and involved in other tech communities as well. To fill in the time, me ended up hacking on the Newsletter extension a bit, and posted the hackathon agenda at bit[dot]ly[slash]mwatfossasia so that people can access and work on it.

Key Learnings

Just wanted to share a few learnings from this hackathon, so that it would be useful for the future in some way:

Publicize properly beforehand by providing prerequisites and etc clearly on the event website. This should involve as simple directions as joining in with a laptop. We also found out that the hard copy of fylers pasted also worked really well.
Double check the target audience before preparing in the agenda. We were shocked to see that the target audience never turned up, but probably this was a problem with how effective the event was publicized locally so that University students can turn up, etc.
Find accomodation somewhere closer to the event space so that the travel time and sleep is saved. This was around 1.2 hours for me, which was a disadvantage at times (but the event usually closed down by 19:00, so only the mornings were an issue).
Add potential participants on 1:1 talks to a telegram group or something so that they can be pulled to the workshops later.

Finances

Travel arrangements

From	Date	To	Date	Granted Price (EUR)	Booked price (EUR)	Comments
TXL (BERLIN)	8 March, 2017	BOM(Bombay)	30 March, 2017	430	403	Turkish Airlines, round trip
COK(Kochi)	16 March, 2017	SIN	20 March, 2017	152	162	Malindo Airlines, round trip
Total	-	-	-	582	565	-

Accomodation and Speaker Tickets

Item	Granted amount	Incurred amount (Eur)
Accomodation	Eur 95	64
Standard Speaker ticket	Eur 245	245
Total	-	309

Additional Expenses (other than granted)

Item	Remarks	Amount (Eur)
Visa	20 Eur	20
Dinner	(was not provided as part of the conf)3* 4 SGD	8
Travel (to-and fro to conference venue)	2.3 * 8 SGD	12.18
Total	-	40.18

Total granted = 922 Eur

Total requested = 565 + 309 + 40.18 = 914.18 Eur (Including additional expenses)

Excluding additional expenses = 565 + 309 = 874 Eur

Amount left over

Left over = 922 - 914.18 = 7.82 Eur

Anything else