Re: SVG IG Hackathon

Replies inline...

Robin Berjon wrote:
>
> On Feb 10, 2009, at 14:13 , G. Wade Johnson wrote:
>> I've sent out some emails to Houston.pm and the PerlMongers' Leaders
>> group about the possibility of an SVG Hackathon-ttype event.
>
> What sort of hacking would a SVG hackathon involve? Building SVG 2.0 
> from scratch? Fixing bugs in browsers? Writing authoring tools and 
> tutorials? Or would it be more content oriented? Or again is it 
> intended to be Perl specific?

The hackathon idea I brought up was that we could contribute in 
small-scale ways with an informal get-together of people who are 
interested in other projects. So no, not SVG 2.0. Maybe a few hours of a 
few people fixing browser bugs or writing tutorials.

In this specific case, Wade mentioned on the call that he's involved 
with a Perl conference so that would be a good venue for outreach.

>
>> The responses have shown a small amount of interest. But, the main
>> question seems to be what would the SVG IG do for such an event:
>>
>> * Host
>> * Organize
>> * Promote
>> * Sponsor
>> * etc.
>
> I don't think that as a group we have the means to host or sponsor an 
> event, but if it helps SVG we can certainly help organise and promote.
>
> Note that I'm pretty sure only a small subset of PM leaders discussed 
> this with their group. If you want the word out, you should put it on 
> use.perl at some point. Also, if the idea is to to promote usage of 
> SVG in the Perl community, contacting the EPO would be a good idea. In 
> any case, SVG has the unequivocal support of Dahut.pm.
Personally I don't think the IG would have to do anything official for 
the size of get-together I was thinking of. I don't know enough about 
Perl or the Perl community to comment on who to talk to about what.

Basically, if you can get 10 people together to spend 3-5 hours doing 
something with getting SVG working better in a Perl app, I'd call that a 
success. If you get 50 people that each do a little work that'd be 
amazing. This is about improving and maintaining, not starting something 
new.
>
>> BTW, I did have a response from one group who is working on a Perl SVG
>> module that needs some help getting it to a releasable state.
>
> I can give a hand with that.
This sounds like the scale I was thinking of. If some Perl experts and 
some SVG experts (with 'expert' being a very flexible word) could 
get-together in-person for a day with the goal of advancing a Perl SVG 
module then that would be a great way for the two groups to work together.
>
>> Once we
>> figure out how we can help, this might be a good project to hack on.
>
> I think one fun Perl project would be to work on a general-purpose 
> Java to Perl translator. It would be useful in a number of cases, and 
> might not be as one may think at first. The link to SVG here is that 
> we could brute-force port Batik with that :)
>

My reply here is just about the idea I brought up. I don't want to stop 
people from going on with other plans, that's great too.

So to re-iterate: basically it'd be good for us to branch out into other 
user groups and communities that are already out there doing good work 
and contribute some of our SVG expertise and enthusiasm to them. A great 
way to get more support for SVG without the IG doing all the work would 
be to talk to people in successful user groups for projects, platforms 
and languages that we like. A user group is likely to already have its 
own venue and people who are used to coming to their meetings. On a 
project-by-project basis, we can find ways to get some time and effort 
directed towards building SVG support. This is about improving and 
maintaining, not starting something new.

That's pretty generic but the intention is to have multiple small 
gatherings that work with established projects. Having gatherings works 
well in larger cities. So Perl users in Houston fits well.

Glad to hear there's some interest out there with Perl users. What about 
focusing on the SVG Perl module Wade mentioned getting some time at a 
user group meeting for someone to show what they've got so far and then 
have people actually work on fixing bugs or adding features right there?

Regards,
Rob Russell
rob@latenightpc.com
http://www.latenightpc.com/blog

Received on Tuesday, 10 February 2009 14:51:39 UTC