CW20 - 2020-03-31 to 2020-04-02

Beta - HP2-CW20

Hackday Idea Proposer

Emmy (slack @Emmy Tsang)

Context / Research Domain

Many collaborative events / workshops are moving online because of the COVID-19 situation; but more generally– can we run events like the CW hackday online, and what would it take?

Problem

How do we facilitate effective collaboration in a virtual event, where:

  • People have to work across multiple time zones: all conversations/communications need to be documented some way on a channel that everyone in the team (at least) can access and consume easily
  • It’s more difficult, esp for newcomers, to get to know other people
  • There’s a lack of watercooler/coffee machine conversations
  • Version control and tracking changes could be trickier?
  • There are different accessibility considerations in comparison to an in-person event, e.g. internet connectivity
  • Anything more?

Solution

Approach 1. Map in-person event collaboration workflows for the various roles (e.g. team lead, documentors, devs, communicators); identify the steps that we have good technical solutions for and the ones that don’t; prototype the ones that don’t

  • The assumption of this approach is that in-person collaborations are productive 😜

Approach 2. Start with the virtual constraints (imagine that in-person events never existed)– build a few participant personas and map the steps via which they would best collaborate. Do we have tools for every step? If yes – can the integrations be smoother? If not – can we prioritise and build them?

Open to other approaches as well

Means: For our own collaborative mapping within the team (meta ;)), maybe we can try using miro? Open to suggestions!

Deliverables:

  • A list of existing tools that could help collaboration, in a GitHub repo
  • Maps with identified technological gaps
  • Some prototypes and wireframes for someone to take it from here and build on it! (if we have time, we can try building some too)

Skills:

  • Product management and UX– Help guide the story mapping and keep us focussed; help prototype
  • Community management– Provide a deep understanding of communication/engagement pain points across a diverse community of participants
  • Research – Landscape and making sure we’re not reinventing wheels
  • Anyone passionate about making the best out of the current situation