## hackathon mar 2025 feedback and debrief

## Maintainers

https://nfcore.slack.com/archives/C043UU89KKQ/p1743065710106669

## James

0. Should do a Hackathon by numbers + our retrospective blog post
https://nfcore.slack.com/archives/C05QEFB0LUW/p1743059466770109
1. Overall very smooth! Smoothest online yet?
- Less runner issues!
- pipeline tests are now a bottle neck
- No GitHub down time!
2. Issues with project proposals
- https://nfcore.slack.com/archives/C043UU89KKQ/p1742826121759309
- Not sure where to put this, but folks have created a hackathon project on the #scdownstream pipeline I am maintaining without contacting me beforehand (and I did not notice). While I am generally happy about the engagement, I would have been even more happy if I would have known before the hackathon.
If I would have know, we could have developed a common plan, to make sure all the ideas actually make sense. As I only noticed today, everything was a bit more stressful than necessary
So maybe a thought: when accepting PRs to the website with new projects (like this), could we maybe check that the affected people (e.g. pipeline maintainers) know about it? Will only be relevant for future hackathons, but still (from Maintainer Nico Trummer)
(from Maxime -> that follows a concern I got from a module and pipeline maintainer that some people were modifying his modules with no prior communication / following plans)
3. Zoom vs YouTube delay in wrap up
- Problem: our site (Berlin) was watching via YouTube, but didn't realise we were meant to talk and then didn't realise we had left the mic on on the zoom connection (and only found out a minute later)
- Easy fix: every site must connect via Zoom
4. Ensuring project leads speak during progress updates
5. Overruning of project lead progress updates
6. Q: do we care (much) about people who join without a specific project, or do we just assume a natural attrition every time
7. Do we want to do a very short survey to gauge feedback to send to all people who attended?

## Maxime

### Praises

> These events look sooo organized, you guys are amazing and doing good stuff.

> Stickers are amazing

> You've inspired a bunch of undergrads to work to become long-term contributors.

### Live stream - links

To be honest it was my first time being in charge of this, so I totally might have messed some things up.
Livestream seemed to work smoothly, I am still unsure about what the issues Chris experienced were.
I think it was good to be less dependant on Phil for once, but let's please avoid to be Max dependant.
It would be nice to have nf-core Zoom accounts for outreach/core member so we don't depend on Seqera/KTH/other institutes.
I feel that the list of links on the website was clear enough as a loose agenda.
I do think having recurring meeting was slightly an overhead (aka streaming key update), but we can get a nice agenda if we plan that properly (ie a single tab per time zome or something like that).
We do need to ask all presenters to register and join on the Zoom meeting.

| APAC | EMEA | AMER |
|--------------|--------------|--------------|
| DAY1 Zoom/YT | DAY1 Zoom/YT | DAY1 Zoom/YT |
| DAY2 Zoom/YT | DAY2 Zoom/YT | DAY2 Zoom/YT |
| DAY3 Zoom/YT | DAY3 Zoom/YT | DAY3 Zoom/YT |

### Social / quizz

I think 2 sessions was good.

### Spotify playlist

We used it on our local site, still fun.
We also did a Spotify Jam, which was fun

### Wrap ups

EMEA has too many projects, and I was over-excited on day 1, so I slightly dragged the wrap up.
While I like the global wrap up, I think we're growing out of it, and I liked the idea that was proposed of just memes to reflect how the project is going.
But we would need a global wrap up blog-post / video to thank all the people.
I feel this is a big question we need to solve properly.

### APAC

I feel so sorry, and I feel we have guilted Chris into participating on the APAC hours while he was in EMEA and already busy with the Seqera R&D retreat.
I feel we had issues communicating on that side before the hackathon, and we all assumed he would be in APAC timezone.

-> That can be fixed with better communication next time
-> Please also let's try to avoid any future Seqera event to coincide with any nf-core hackathon (ie events/trainings)

### nf-core/empire

> [The sun will never set on nf-core hackathon](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YB0CZipOrmw&t=125s)

I think we can do better than that (it slightly felt a bit imperialistic).

## Matthias

### Quiz

AMER time was way too late set. We fixed that by moving it to 12:30 PDT / 3:30 EDT. Should do the same next time (and maybe set the EMEA one back to 2pm CET, so we are more family friendly).

### Wrap ups

I don't think it is helpful to hear what everybody is working on. In Data Centre we are using these report slides  and I think focusing on the wins and support needed sections for our wrap ups would be helpful. I like the meme idea (because tbh that's why I usually look at the wrap up slides), but it will be difficult to avoid falling into explaining-the-joke territory.

### Scavenger hunt

Not sure why it didn't take off too much this time... :disappointed:

## Fran
I was positively surprised how it went. There were a few last minute hickups and I have these suggestions:
- setup of the youtube stream links, there should be better instructions on how to do this
- specifically for EMEA that has lots of people and projects: make sure ppl know they have to keep their summaries in the wrap up brief, requiring them to have the speaker in bold on the slide was good. Skipping over slides without a speaker was also good
- also for wrap ups: clarifying earlier who is responsible for which time zone and who is doing intro and outro with backups would be good
- slack worked well as an alternative to gather, at least in my group.
- In my project group I did a day 3 meeting to see where we stand and what needs to be done, I can only recommend to do this
- we had youtube ads in our intro, is there a way we can disable that from the nf-core account?
- scavenger hunt didn't get much love

## Florian

### General feedback
- Smooth experience from an organizational standpoint
- I am worried people not at a local site felt left out (we barely saw any individual people in Zoom calls. Do they just watch it on Youtube?!)
- Not having gather felt a bit more isolating at a local site and it was harder to "discover" other people and just chat
- Beside local sites posting pictures, the general chat seemed a bit dead, meaning I didn't see alot of newcomers post stuff (maybe this all happened in project channels...)

### Projects
- Boards were super organized and it was easy to point people to "stuff" to do.
- The sheer amount of stuff on the boards can be intimidating and overwhelming though.
- Boards are not the "easiest" to find for newbies. How can we make them more front and center for people that want to get started (especially alone at home without guidance, as people at local sites have)
- Working on issues on the Nextflow codebase directly was a bit hard to track / document on Project boards because it only accepts issues from nf-core repos (this might have only been an issue for me or very few people :sweat_smile:)

### Social activities
- Connectgame didn't get played much (or at least people don't post high scores)
- Scavenger hunt didn't seem to get much participation
- Spotify playlist didn't get ANY additions from people?!
- No Sockhunt!!! #sad