Posted by piyuesh23 on February 24, 2015 at 11:30am
Hello Drupalers,
Our regional communities across the country have organised a number of successful Code Sprints(kudos to everyone involved!) and the contributions coming out of these Sprints are truly commendable. The idea of having the whole of Indian Drupal Community come together for a Global Code Sprint (once every month) sounds "Really" interesting to me.
We can come up with a Yearly calendar and dedicate one weekend every month wehrein all the regional communities participate together and contribute!
Simple perks :
- We connect on a broader level
- More mentors, Best practices
- Indian Drupal Community on a whole gets recognition
How does this idea sound to you guys? How to take this forward?
Comments
Great idea. I am not sure if
Great idea. I am not sure if it is feasible to do this monthly. Can we start at a lower frequency?
UPDATE: I think you meant a National code sprint. :)
Great idea Piyush. Some one
Great idea Piyush. Some one need to take lead on this & schedule.
+1 for this awesome initiative.
Really Great Idea Piyush,
Its really great idea, Its good having very month, But my question is how much feasible for every one?
If we can share a calendar that will be great.
Rakesh James
Awesome Ide !
Awesome Idea, Here is the plan for Drupal Mumbai Code Sprint for 2015 - Please keep it align with India sprint.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_9zgjvwqDRRpFcLTX3cTiFHSFwAcUABB...
Also, count me in for any help required in conducting this.
Cheers,
Rachit Gupta
Founder DrupalMumbai, DrupalCAP.org
rachit.gupta@drupalmumbai.org
GREAT !
Great idea Piyush, Many Drupalers from india are awaiting for such kind of initiative.
Mitesh Patel
Email Me / Skype: developermitesh
Great idea.
I really like this idea. Lets mark the calendars and start sprinting.
We should also consider quarterly or bi-annual sprints with an annual gathering of some kind.
Awesome idea
Awesome.So for doing at the national level I think let's choose the common weekend so that it will be comfortable for all the drupalers of various regional communities.
In my previous company in NCR,some companies has working first and third weekend.So also get the gathering information of drupalers on which weekend.I have created a poll so that we can get to know which weekend will best fit for the Meetup.We can also do along with this thread.
https://groups.drupal.org/node/458063
Thoughts ?
Naveen Valecha
https://www.valechatech.net
Wonderful Idea!!
Hey Piyuesh,
Its a wonderful idea. One Sprint every month might be difficult considering there'll be a regional event/meetup every month. But I think we can have 1 or 2 sprints and then we can take a call based on the attendance.
On the other hand, we can have all the list of mentors across the country and take turns as well. And people who are mentoring can call for a sprint in their region where people can come and meet physically.
Count me in for mentoring or any other help.
Regards,
Chakrapani R,
Azri Solutions,
Bangalore
Most regional communities
Most regional communities have monthly sprints, if we can align them to happen on same day that'd be great. If its a separate initiative then I think it'll be taxing at monthly frequency.
We should seek inputs of code sprint organisers of Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Pune, Chennai and hyderabad as to what they think about consolidating sprints and keeping meetups (talks/get togethers) separate.
Summarising responses from regional organisers.
Mumbai -- Rachit supports the idea, preferred week needs to be discussed. Need inputs from Siddharth and others
Bangalore -- Hussain and Chakrapanni likes the direction, but frequency is an issue.
Pune -- Most people here support the idea and frequency, preferred week needs to be discussed
Pending
Delhi -- Need inputs from vaibhav, Abhishek, Parth, Mayank
Hyderabad -- Need inputs from Siva, Anwar
Chennai -- Need inputs from Shyamala, Lakshmi and others
Following up on chakrapani's suggestion, we can plan two sprints in span of 3 months, announce them and take it from there.
Dipen Chaudhary
Founder, QED42 http://www.qed42.com Drupal development
+1 for Monthly or Bi-monthly sprints
+1 for Monthly or Bi-monthly sprints
Good one!
Good to see that code sprints are serious one now :)
I have tried to have these sprint organised (Mumbai, Pune and Chennai) from outside India and didn't go well. Here is a list of reason why:
Timezone - I was in GMT and it is just 4hrs overlap - Guess, this is not a problem for the current situation
Issues preparation - For mentors, it is not just one day (sprint day) task to find issues to work on. We have to keep up with the issue queue, finding all type of issues (novice, complex, medium) by priority (i.e. how quickly we can get this in depending on current release/focus plan of core). - We need someone dedicated to work on this front. As the issue queue is a moving target, this is one of the hard tasks. Once we have set of issues to work on, this person may need to give this list to local mentors before sprint day.
Reaching out - It's really a big effort to reach out to all. It's also important to reach out appropriate time (i.e. not too early and not too late).- One option is reduce this effort is fixed day for the whole year. Like, every 3rd Saturday of a month is a National Sprint Day™.
So overall, we need a global functional team that works on tasks a week or two before sprint day and local sprint mentors.
Big +1 on #2 For National
Big +1 on #2
For National sprint to be successful its important that we have some structure in place as there will be some communication issues, working on #2 above will set clearer expectations. Best way fwd would be for regional mentors to have a call and hash it out, so that less time is spent on fighting the chaos.
Things that could help
0> Helping attendees to come prepared, there is ton of documentation but in sprints when there are new comers lot of time is spent on it.
1> Have a list upfront which is a mix of new issues, re-rolls, reviews both backend and front end, in Pune for longest of time we didn't cater to front end contributors but thats improving after sprint with Lauri in DCD.
2> Pairing with Mentors -- Locally and maybe online using hangouts (bit ambitious, but would be great)
3> IF its a day long event, then order in food than going out -- we saw this being the biggest momentum breaker in Pune :)
Dipen Chaudhary
Founder, QED42 http://www.qed42.com Drupal development
Agreed!
agreed on those items. Over all, I feel, we would know better after we ran these sprints for 3 to 6 months.
Good idea
Hi Piyush,
Its really a very good idea to conduct a global code sprint. Since its going to be across india, once a month sounds good. Regional drupal communities can plan their meetup/sprints during the same time.
Sounds like a plan
A very good plan. Lets do it guys.
In fact we should subsequently try reaching out to smaller/ isolated communities in places like Chandigarh, Kolkata, Srinagar, Jaipur, Vizag, Bhubaneswar, Patna etc.. and get them onboarded as well ( this time or the next ones ).
Lately I have also been researching & doing some data collection ( thanks to Megan, Lauren, Jacob, Ani & Parth) for an upcoming session about Indian Drupal Community evolution at CXO day, Drupalcamp London this friday and the results quite indicate that we as a community are maturing and transitioning from "Consumption" to "Contribution" aware community. We have come a long way since last 9 years ( First Drupalcamp/meetup in India was announced in 2006 )
Lets come together and do more such activities, initiatives as united team with regionals taking ownership in their respective geographies. I am in the process of collecting my thoughts and would be proposing some plans to the community in a couple of days.
-Piyush Poddar
Quite a discussion here
Piyuesh,
Awesome thing.
We are already trying to implement a Drupal Meetup every month in Delhi NCR, with one held last Friday in Srijan. Planning this every month might be no big issue, we will be doing it across India and we can use IRC / Slack for communication. (We are already starting using Slack for Delhi Meetups.)
If we plan to do this physically, not sure if that would be feasible every month. Constraint I see is, we have very few organizations ready to do Drupal meetup at their place; keeping in mind the cost involved, and we pushing them to host another event, it may not come out smoothly.
All in all, Superb Idea, no doubt people will not only connect but connect strongly, within the region, outside of the region and get to know many more new people. New devs will get a strong chance to move ahead, and no doubt will help the Drupal Community grow.
Vaibhav Jain
Let's add Codesprint in a monthly cycle
Vaibhav,
I think we should add CodeSprint in Drupal Monthly Events cycle. So we can organize Meetup or CodeSprint in the month. This will not push organizations to host another events in same month.
+1 for Monthly or Bi-monthly sprints
We at Hyderabad are having Bi-monthly sessions specific to Drupal contribution on Saturday's. We started this last year. Check http://groups.drupal.org/hyderabad. We have extended that session this time to have full day sprint on the following Sunday.
We had the latest sprint on #drupal-in IRC channel and 7 people participated from different parts of India like pune, ahmedabad, etc. So we will continue to have our Bi-monthly sprints on #drupal-in on Sundays 11am-4pm
We have also planned to pull students from universities like IIIT-H, JNTU & IIT Hyderabad for the next sprint.
So, yes. We can do this in a much larger scale. Count me in :)
Siva Kumar Epari
Sounds super cool!
Yeah! Looking forward to it. Let's plan and make it happen.
Wonderful initiative!
How are we planning to invite people from the smaller cities to join in? Could it be taken up by the communities in the capital city of the state? This would be such a wonderful initiative to make all the "wary" novices also get comfortable with d.o, as they go through the process with the mentors.
a huge +1 from me Piyush!
+1 for monthly
Great Idea Lets Plan And Execute This.
Fantastic idea piyuesh23
Fantastic idea piyuesh23 !
I'd love to be part of it.
This is would be a good
This is would be a good initiative and I believe frequency of once a month should be fine according to me.
I believe following points would be crucial
Mentors: Each of the regions should have a mentor who is present physically. That guy should be present with other participants to facilitate things. This is important else new folks start loosing interest.
Pulling in folks from smaller towns should also be taken into consideration.
What exactly to cover in a sprint should be detailed out. Reviewing a patch or finding an issue should be also taken into consideration for sprints not just patches. This is important specially for QA guys and other new folks.
@piyushpoddar: I have relocated to Chandigarh and would be visiting couple of colleges and other companies in the area to understand the community here. I believe Axelerant also has a office in Chandigarh, could you share the details so that I can reach out to concerned guy here in Chandigarh. Basically would need couple of more guys for some help :)
Lets make it happen.
Thanks,
Ashish.
Great Initiative
I have gone through the sheet link which Rachit Gupta has posted, so is March 14th OK for every one?
Sunday will be good because
Sunday will be good because in some company Saturday is not off anyway make sure you folks are signup here http://www.meetup.com/Drupal-Mumbai-Meetup-Group/events/220726843/?a=ea1...
Thanks everyone for showing
Thanks everyone for showing so much of interest in Code Sprints..:)
Great to see the enthusiasm building in Drupal community for contributions. Lets start with Sprints once in a month for sometime. We can change the frequency if this doesn't workout. Rachit has already worked on a Sprint Calendar. Lets see if we can align with that. It has mostly 2nd & 4th weekends reserved for code-sprints.
Hussain, Nice name there. Yyep i meant "National code sprints" ..:)
This definitely needs to be well-structured for people to collaborate well. Summarising the concerns & actions points below:
Concerns
Keeping an eye on the issue queue. This is the most important one. It used to be a huge problem earlier, but i believe this is something all the mentors do monitor now. Need to be prepared with a list of issues before the sprint. The list should be a mix of patch-reoll, novice, documentation, critical, major etc.. Idea is to be able to serve different groups of people. Probably a hangout session among the mentors prior to the Sprints can solve this out?
Reaching out to people. Can we fix one of the weekends every month for this. So, people are well notified in advance about the Sprints? Naveen has created a poll at https://groups.drupal.org/node/458063. And then putting this over the social media. Could create a calendar & let people subscribe to the events once we have fixed the dates.
Preparedness for the Sprint. This is something i have noticed in almost every Sprint. Lot of time is spent setting up local dev instances. The only way i see getting it fixed is communicating better & making people understand, how important it is to have a dev instance setup when we meeting for a Code Sprint. Not sure of any other way we can fix it. Thoughts?
IF its a day long event, then order in food than going out. This makes complete sense. Breaks the momentum going out for lunch. Better to order Pizzas. i love them..:) This can be done by getting companies to sponsor the Sprints. This again would help getting more people involved in the Sprints.
Getting feedback from people coming for Sprints. Would help us to keep improving. Probably a quick google form can help us out here.
Having mentors physically present on the Sprint location. This is pretty much the case for regions already sprinting. Not sure how can we handle it for regions who wanna start on it. Thoughts?
Action Points:
Decide on the weekend which would suit us the best. Poll available at https://groups.drupal.org/node/458063. We can definitely change this going forward.
Get all the mentors together & talk about issue queue. Does it sound good to talk a week before the Sprint?
"Having mentors physically
"Having mentors physically present on the Sprint location. This is pretty much the case for regions already sprinting. Not sure how can we handle it for regions who wanna start on it. Thoughts?"
I suggest we keep it simple to start with. There are few matured communities around like Delhi, Pune, Mum, Hyd with very good leadership. Let them take the lead and consolidate on this idea. The rest with follow and may be after a couple of sprints we will have a much more organized way of inducting new groups.
Having said that, there is enough on this thread to get started. Shall we propose couple of people from each regional group to coordinate and represent?
Delhi:
Chandigarh:
Pune:
Hyderabad:
Mumbai:
Chennai:
+
http://goo.gl/icjPn
From Hyderabad
Hyderabad: Me, Anwar, Asiq Khan & Naveen
Siva Kumar Epari
Adding Bangalore to the list :)
Bangalore: Hussain Deghamwala and Chakrapani
Delhi Daredevils
Count me IN, haven't had an interaction yet with others, hopefully will add more people to the list.
Vaibhav Jain
Great Initiative
Super one piyuesh23 !!
Thank you for sharing this idea and initiative to start a discussion.
Recently in DCM2015, we had a discussion on this topic as well. It would be really awesome if it get executed soon.
Count me IN.
In Gujarat, we are planning for a regular code sprints as well. We would love to be a part of this Indian Global Sprint.
Ujval Shah
Linked-in : http://in.linkedin.com/in/ujvalshah
Skype : ujval99
Gtalk : ujval99
Add Katihar (Bihar) also in this list
Katihar:
Md Sirajuddin
Telecommand Software Pvt. Ltd.
Officer's colony, Mirchaibari
Katihar, 854105
Add Me in the Delhi
Add Me in the Delhi Daredevils List.