Hacking Central

What is a Hack?

A "hack" is a small project that aims to solve a specific problem using computational tools.

Examples of hacks include:

• a working demo of a new or modified algorithm (example here)
• an outline of a larger project, with some key features scoped (example here)
• a new visualization of an old dataset (for example here)
• a modified algorithm applied to a new dataset
• a mash-up of two pre-existing pieces of code to perform some new function (example here)

Pro-Tips

• Start with ideas that are close to home: your graduate work, a project for your company, something you have always been interested in.
• reach out to other participants: Hacking is a community activity!
• start with the simplest things first, and add complexity later
• Help your neighbor: you might be the person they need to solve their problem, and vice versa
• When discussing, pitch your explanation to the least experienced hacker in the group, and you'll end up better understanding what you're trying to do

Getting Started

• Who are you going to hack with? Here's the list of your fellow hackers
• What are you going to work on?
  • Here's the list of hack ideas
  • Here's the collection of the hacks already in progress

Schedule

• Daily scrum - a 5 minute stand-up each morning to identify issues and to tackle problems before they get too big to handle! The purpose of a scrum is to encourage collaboration between groups, to offer expertise and to ask for help if you encounter a roadblock.

• Regroup at 5:30pm for the day's wrap-up: volunteer to present what you've built, if you want, 1 minute each. Your products will need URLs: your notes on hackpad will enable this, at minimum.

• Breakouts will happen during the hack sessions - these are informal discussions/tutorials that will be organized as we go, via whiteboard. Listen out for announcements about breakouts during the afternoon.

• In the final wrap-up on Friday, everyone presents. This means you will need to have whatever you want to show logged on the hackpad and/or checked in! And if you just want to say what you got out of the week, that's cool too. Note that Friday's wrap-up is a celebration :-)

Resources

• We'll keep track of all projects on the GeoHack Week 2016 Hackpad. Sign up, log in, play around. Each hack needs its own page: as your hack gets going, make a page and log your progress.