My work for the Cloudfest Hackathon 2024 already started way earlier than many might think. During WordCamp Germany 2023 I got approached by Carole wether I could imagine myself being a Projectmentor for the hackathon once more. A few weeks later we already had a first call around the expectations on the project.
The role as a project mentor
As always the role on paper looks different to the doings at the end. The idea of having project mentors is to support the organizers and the project leads to make sure we have great projects that match the attendee/applications profile of the hackathon. In this years edition I mentored 5 projects:
Mentoring included working with the Project leads on their ideas and really making sure they are appealing to the audience and they have a clear endgoal which is achievable during the hackathon. We might not be able to rescue the world but we’re certainly able to do something great during those 48 hours.
My Projects
Here is my short 2cts on how I saw my five projects before the hackathon.
WordPress Tools for Hosting Providers
The team planned to rework parts of the existing Hosting Tests the WordPress Hosting Team is running on various hosts infrastructures. The plan was to add new features like multi-php support or the ability to list all tests from a certain host.
Enable Mastodon Apps
Matthias had big plans: Use your very own WordPress instance through any Mastodon-compatible app and rework the user experience of WordPress by allowing a microblogging interface on your devices. I saw this project as a bridge between Social Media Apps and WordPress.
Inclusive Language Checker
Birgit plan was to develop a WordPress plugin that helps everyone working with WordPress to write in a more inclusive way and make people aware of potential issues in their writing habits. This plugin should provide a non intrusive but still visible way to improve everyones content especially in official documentations. Perfect goal would be to have this available on make.wordpress.org one day
Hack the Hackathon
Running a hackathon is not something easy. The Hack the Hackathon Team planned to have a “Hackathon in a Box” when it comes to all the tools you might need when running a hackathon. From a simple website, to forms and chat services … all included with a single click.
CMS Health Checks
The CMS Health Checks leads plan was to develop a new open standard that provides monitoring systems way more information around the health of a CMS than a simple ping check could ever provide. Even before the hackathon we connected people from multiple open source CMS systems together and aligned on the project goals to have one standard hosts could implement one day and better serve all their clients.
Summary
I really liked the spirit of this years CloudFest Hackathon. Seeing the diverse lineup of projectleads and attendees showed off the great work the organizing team did in the past years to foster this environment.
In retrospective something I could have done better would be the upfront communication with my projectleads and prepare them better on one of the most important parts of the hackathon: Their sales pitch! Those 2 minutes where they stand infront of 120 people who might never heard of the project but needed to be convinced that this is their project. In the end two of my five projects ended up understaffed which could have been avoided through better mentoring by myself.
Really looking ahead for next years #CFHack2025.