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nickgartmann

Maker Social Network hackathon

tsaylor on 9/24/2011

Presenters:

tsaylor

Difficulty Level:

any

Difficulty Level:

beginner

Difficulty Level:

expert

Difficulty Level:

intermediate

Difficulty Level:

ninja

I will be running a hackathon to create an open source maker social network. Jordan Bunker and I presented on this idea last year and intended to build it ourselves, but that never happened. (Doing things is hard!) This year we'd like to kick it off as an open source project so the hacker and maker community at large can benefit from the collaboration tools we have planned.

There are a couple main features:

forums / mailing lists: if you are discussing some general information, not things particular to your group, why keep it on your group's maililng list? Make it a general post exposed through tags. Users subscribe to tags and receive threads in an "inbox" based on their interests.
project management tools: Do you have a group of people working on one project? start a group and get access to some set of project management tools to help you collaborate, organize the project internally, and show it off externally.
resource sharing: Hey guys, we have <list of tools>, contact us if you need one of those to get your project rolling!
resource training: Hackerspaces have dangerous tools and they develop their own certification system to ensure that you use them safely (for you and the tool). There's no reason these processes can't be shared. Sharing that system would cause courseware to eventually be developed so people could teach classes on various tools without having to start from scratch.
centralized certification: If certification is standardized, then a certification in one hackerspace should be valid in all of them. A list of skills could be associated with a user to create a resume of sorts, and less experienced users could find people to ask questions.

What we'll need:

developers: I'm willing to teach python and django if we choose that, but I'm open
designers: Appearance and UI/UX design are important to making a successful tool
alpha testers: (aka, interested but can't help) I'm a fan of agile and lean processes, so getting something in front of users is important to see if the idea's any good.
What else? I'm not sure. I think that covers it, but if you think you can help in a way I didn't list that's great!

Want to help? Join up on the links below.

Mailing list: https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!forum/maker-social-network

Github: https://github.com/tsaylor/Maker-Network

Requirements:

ability to write on wall (whiteboard/paper/etc)

Requirements:

laptop/computer