Projects Overview

The following was borrowed and adapted from the excellent SnowEx Hackathon 2021

This section contains everything you need to know about cloud hackathon projects.

Purpose of the projects:

During the Cloud Hackathon we will be facilitating team hacking sessions in the second half of each day. The purpose of these sessions is for you to gain hands-on experience in working together on a well-defined problem, in a collaborative space where you can talk things through and get help.

What is hacking?

Hacking is a session of focused, highly collaborative work time – often involving coding – in which the group creates conditions for rapid absorption of new ideas and methods. The word “hack” or “hackathon” has many different interpretations, both positive and negative. Here our intention is to foster the idea of hacking as a fun, interactive and welcoming environment to explore and experiment with computer code.

How will the projects be conducted?

Participants are invited to start conversations about projects in the Slack channel 2021-nasacloudhack-projects one week before the Cloud Hackathon begins.

  • If you have a project idea brewing, please pitch it in this channel (even if you have signed up for the cloud hackathon as a team; tag your proposed teammates if you already have that worked out).
  • Start a thread with “Project idea:” and then provide a few sentences. Include whether you are looking for teammates to join this project. Others who are interested can respond in a thread.
  • We welcome a broad range of project topics. People often use project time to dig deeper into concepts introduced in tutorials, to explore problems within their own research, or to advance community data sharing and software building efforts.
  • The Cloud Hackathon team is here to help you get clear on project ideas and decide on what is possible within 5 days. Feel free to reach out to any of us between now and the Cloud Hackathon in the 2021-nasacloudhack-help channel, or @ us – we all have “helper” appended to the front of our names. !

At the end of Day 1 of the Cloud Hackathon we will have a Pitchfest where proposer(s) can pitch their idea, and mention whether they are still looking for teammates or if they have already formed a team using the Slack _#2021-nasacloudhack-projects _channel. At this time we will finalize the project teams for the week.

Team hacktime will begin on Day 2.

Each team is encouraged to identify a project lead, likely the person who pitched the idea, who has knowledge of the datasets and the specific problem to be explored. But roles can be assigned as the group decides to best fit skills and needs.

Throughout the hackathon we will have optional morning office hours 8-9am PT for additional support or team check-in time.

On the final day of the Cloud Hackathon, each team will present their work in a series of lightning talks.

What can I do to prepare in advance?

  • If you have a project idea already brewing, we encourage you to share that with participants on our Slack channel 2021-nasacloudhack-projects.
  • Feel free to explore various projects and initiate conversations. The goal is to gather as much information as you can to inform your decision about which team to join during the Cloud Hackathon

How to start hacking

Suggestions for how to set up your GitHub workflow is in the GitHub Workflows section.

This is a great slide deck for collaborating on project teamwork collaborating from SnowEx Hackweek.