Summer of Hacks (a look backs)

Adam Leskis
Nov 8 · 7 min read

Background

Since the previous Summer of Hacks events had taken place way back in 2016, I and Rich Douglas, both enterprising members of the Digital Oxford community, decided to try and run it again in 2019. It took a lot of planning, and we’re hoping that the materials and schedules we put together will be useful (and cut down on planning time) during the next iteration. Most helpfully, we also formed a very productive relationship with the Oxfordshire County Public Library which we will definitely be building upon in the future.

In this quick look back, we’ll be explaining the schedule of events and what we hoped to achieve from each of them, as well as detail the lessons learnt and next steps going forward. The first port of call would probably be the website.

At the outset, we decided that we wanted to set up something that would be useful for the community, explicitly applicable to a range of skill levels, and that could be leveraged as a way to learn new skills or build on existing ones. We were also interested in leveraging our existing relationships within the Digital Oxford community to help build more lasting links with the less technical side of Oxford (businesses, artists, designers, etc).

The first big win we got was finding a great venue. We were excited when it turned out that the Oxfordshire County Library was available, and it suited our needs perfectly. It was free, well-organised for events, and Mark the librarian was extremely helpful. We worked very closely with him to set up our events, and it’s largely thanks to his work, as well as other library staff, that the events went off as well as they did.

We also would like to give a big thank you to Haybrook IT (https://www.haybrook.co.uk/), the sponsors for the entire series of events, providing food and refreshments for all participants. They are long-time supporters of the Digital Oxford community, and we couldn’t have done it without their assistance.

NodeSchool

Adam and Mark

Our first event was NodeSchool, targeted at beginning javascript developers who wanted to get more familiarity with this (typically) server-side language. It follows along with a free worldwide course, and although it features a multitude of different offerings for various skill levels, we were aiming at introducing attendees to the basic ones, with the idea that they would be able to follow successive courses on their own as and when they chose.

There was a great turnout on the day (17 at last count), and lots of different skill levels. It turned out that a lot of participants needed fundamental JS skills rather than jumping straight into node, which was something that we hadn’t anticipated, but not actually that surprising.

As a general theme to these events, we experienced participation from a much wider section of the community that just those engaged in programming, and this was very encouraging to see, as it validated our assumptions that this series of events could function as a bridge to engage those beyond the existing Digital Oxford community.

As one consequence of this, we decided midway through the session to amend the programme and present an impromptu workshop/discussion on Git and associated concepts. This was welcomed by all participants, as source control for code was something that many of them had passing familiarity with, but had never had the chance to engage with in a deeper, more practical way.

Hardware Hackday

clappy bird (patent pending)

Our second event involved using (primarily, though not necessarily) javascript to interact with hardware such as lights, motors and other mechanical devices. There were a similar number of participants to the first event, though much more variation in terms of motivations. Some of the attendees had existing projects that they were interested in working on, while others had come along to see what using software to interact with hardware was all about.

This event, compared to the other two, was the biggest hit with younger participants, and featured such projects as getting robots to draw on paper, using lights to simulate train service status, and exploiting a pressure sensor to interact with video games. It’s fair to say that all participants, no matter their level of experience, enjoyed the event, and came away with a better idea of things they could do with hardware.

Gordon Williams of Espruino fame and Carlos Perate were both awesome mentors on the day, happy to answer questions and pair with folks on their hacks.

The library’s MakerSpace was particularly well placed to support this event: it had tons of hackable hardware available for us to use including Makey Makey kits and Raspberry Pis.

Language Hackday

Dan using NLP to analyse BBC subtitles

Our third and final event is one that was very close to my personal interests, aimed at using software to interact with any sort of language resources (in audio or video format). It was admittedly an extremely broad remit, though this was mostly a consequence of not being able to find any examples of similar events ever being held (on the internet, ever!). So it was hoped that by being very broadly targeted, we would be able to accommodate the widest possible interests, and also get a better idea of what people were actually interested in.

It turned out that the day became a bit more like an overview of what could be achieved with NLP technologies. A few of the attendees had existing projects they wanted to work on, while others just tried to install tensorflow (which is a vast topic and could use its own hackday). While this was our least attended event, it was still full of lively discussion and experimentation, and the participants definitely left with a better idea of some common applications of computers in the general area of language.

In contrast to the other two events, there were a number of participants who were interested in the general area because they interact with other team members who use NLP, not necessarily because they themselves are expecting to need to use it. This was very encouraging, as it showed a level of interest in the wider community that perhaps might be addressed by more focused events in the future.

Future Directions

One thing that is absolutely undeniable, is that this series of events provided an abundance of good interaction between us, the library and the community. Going forward, there are incredible opportunities to refine the offerings for the event schedule, and leverage the resources such as the Oxfordshire County Library and its staff to yield stronger engagement with the local community.

Though we hadn’t initially conceived it as such, the series of events could easily be refocused as a more explicit link between programmers with particular skills and those interested in leveraging those skills to fulfil business needs. In addition, it was clear that discussions, particularly between designers and developers, that took place on the day were fruitful and resulted in greater engagement within the community.

As another lesson, we definitely need to spend more time creating differentiated materials suitable for a wider span of experience and skill levels. The advantage of doing this is two-fold: we’d have them available on the day to accommodate those turning up who might be different to our expected target audience, and since these materials will live on in digital form, we only have to create them once. This would be the biggest step towards improving the event experience for participants.

Another aspect that we stand to build on is a sense of what to do next, after the event has ended. While there are certainly a wealth of materials available online, we could easily curate these a bit and make possible next steps more explicit for attendees. Further, having contacts in the local community who would be interested in making practical usage of these skills would be a natural extension of the work done on the day itself.

In addition, those that are interested in moving forward in becoming software developers themselves would be able to use the events not only as skill-building exercises, but also as networking opportunities to support their journey towards becoming professionals in the industry.

Our biggest update to the event series is for next year’s Summer of Hacks events to fold into the library’s existing Digital Summer program. This will deepen our collaboration with the library and the community that the library fosters through its various digital programs — FreeCodeCamp, CodeBar, CodeClub — and provide an obvious pathway to supporting folks beyond the one-day events. We were greatly impressed by the library and its staff during this Summer’s events, and we are very keen to exploit them as a resource in future community events.

*Last words

Mark the brilliant and talented librarian

Overall, we were exceedingly pleased with the event series, look forward to hosting them again next year in a bigger and better iteration, and plan to announce the 2020 Summer of Hacks events in the new year.

Once again, an enormous thank you to Oxfordshire County Library, Mark Sutcliffe, and Haybrook IT!

See you next year.

Adam Leskis

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champion of micromaterials for language education

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