On Jan 24, 2013, at 1:10 PM, Quim Gil qgil@wikimedia.org wrote:
- Unclear (to me, still) actual purpose, goal and fit with the rest of Wikimania.
The people who run the hackathon can choose to concentrate on inreach, which will happen anyway: the existing Wikimedia tech community gets together and aligns and executes. And/or, the hackathon organizers can choose to concentrate on empowering regular Wikimedians to learn skills, to improve their own browsing and contributing experiences, and to possibly join the tech crowd. I'm in favor of doing it as inreach/outreach hybrid, because the former will happen practically on its own, and the latter is a big opportunity. The big commitment necessary for outreach: we must arrange to have several extroverted helpers onsite, to matchmake and help newbies get past blocks. Three is not enough.
Asheesh and Quim, of the newbie-to-WM-tech participants in the Wikimania 2012 hackathon, can you tell what proportion are still contributing now?