Hackday talk for UK Lotus User Group

The Hackday concept is all about being innovative and different and so I thought I should not use anything as boring as a slide based presentation for my talk at the UK Lotus Users Group in Edinburgh. Of course the other advantage is that anyone not at the event gets to see what I covered.

1. I intend to start by playing some of the video hackumentary from Yahoo to acknowledge the Yahoo events ad the inspiration for the IBM Hackdays (but I will mention that Yahoo were not the first - just the best publicised).
   

   Open Hack Day 2008 - a hackumentary | Part 1 from ricky montalvo on Vimeo.

   
   


2. Next I will hare a Google map that shows the spread of the Hackday meme.
   
   View Hackday in a larger map
   
   Then I will show where the Hackday 007 local events are happening
   
   
   View Hackday7 Local Events in a larger map
   


3. Next I will tell them about out local Hackdays by showing them the map of Hackday pictures on Flickr


4. I will share some statistics of the growth of Hackday from HD1 through HD6
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

   Hackday	Date	Projects	Participants
   HD1	1-Jun-2006	59	64
   HD2	1-Dec-2006	20	30
   HD3	18-May-2007	70	88
   HD4	12-Oct-2007	129	161
   HD5	25-Apr-2008	353	433
   HD6	24-Oct-2008	449	552

   
   


5. 
   I will speak about the concept of "winning" Hackday. Mostly the prize is the recognition of your peers. Occasionally we run special contest in conjunction with Hackday. There will be special conditions/criterion associate with the competitions (e.g. the best example of using a particular tool/technology). The competition winners can win a substantial prize e.g. US$1,500 or a trip to Lotusphere.
   


6. Finally I will how a few example hacks such as




1. IBM Travel Maps - a cool map/mash-up which allows IBMers to see IBM offices, IBM Approved Hotels, Airport etc. for a city that they plan to visit.
   
   


2. Google Gadgets in Notes - this was an early version of a feature which subsequently became Notes Widgets. At the time we had a composite application programming model, but no components were available to be assembled into composite applications.


3. Sametime command line - a simple command line interface to Sametime. Typical use case is a build script which sends a Sametime IM message to members of the development team when the the build is complete.



4. MicroBlogCentral a notes side shelf plugin which sends updates to the Lotus Connections Porfiles site - and also sends to Twitter, BlueTwit, BeeHive and several other services.
   


7. Finally I hope there can be some open discussion about whether or not it would be feasible to run Hackdays in other large companies and/or in conjunction with Lotus User Group events.