Planning

Key messages

Event is open to all skill levels, and training is provided.
People will learn, have fun, make friends, and add value
Voluntari.ly - Brings people together.

Getting People there

Numbers

Depends on advertising and what else is competing.

10 - 20 - Plenty to achieve good work with
20 - 50 - Amazing, the place will be buzzing
50 - 80 - Intimidating but we can manage it.
80 - practical limit, we won't be able to manage the workload effectively.

Promotion

Corporate network
- Westpac
- Datacom
- AND...
University
- Promote to year 2-4 IT students and postgrads
Government
- TEC Dev Team
- MfE etc.
Nerd Night welly and other Tech meet ups
Advertising - Linked in, Twitter, FB etc.
Special Invites - VIPs, reps from Govt Agencies, Sponsors etc. MfE TEC.

Promotional Materials

Online - we will provide Event specific space at Voluntari.ly website.
Poster design.
Video and stuff based on the last event.

Registration

I think Voluntari.ly can now be used for registration.
But as a backup we can have a sign up form on the squarespace site. or a survey form there to collect more details.

Date, Duration and Times

Target Date - about 4-6 weeks from now. e.g End of June

Duration Recommend 2 days - e.g. full weekend.

We found that with 1 day people are just getting started when they have to stop.

Something we have not tried is a weekday event. Don’t know what the turnout would be unless specific companies are giving staff time off

Times - These worked for us
- 8:00 we have access to venue
- 8:30 - 9:00 mingling and breakfast
- 9:00 - gather and initial presentations
- 10:00 work and tutorials
- 4pm - day checkin/demos,
- Space available to 6pm - its not an all nighter
- Day 2 - open and breakfast from 8:00
- Closing events around 4pm
- End by 5pm.

Venue

Needs:

Room for however many you think will attend
Open and welcoming
Space for
- Tutorials and presentations
- breakout / discussion corners
- team work tables - usually 5 - 7 per team
- Huddle / Chat areas.
Accessible power sockets for everyone's laptops
WiFi
Whiteboards and working pens. Notepads
Easy to get to

Hospitality

Steady supply of tea/coffee/milo/ soda.
Bonus if there is proper available some of the time
Meals
- Breakfast - e.g fruit. & pastries - Helps to get people there before the start
- Lunch - Support food preferences.
  - Other times - plates of fruit and biscuits seem to keep everyone happy
Fun Things to do - games, stretching, competitions etc.
- we did not try this yet - everyone seemed fully involved in the work.

Activities

Start : Introductions, explain voluntarily, give overview of the tech, purpose and goals for the weekend
Form teams - around key goals and skill sets
Then Work and Tutorial streams
Day 2 - starts with stand up to see where everyone is at
Ends with Demonstrations and feedback.

Development Goals

These will change as we get closer but probably will include

Skills, Tags and Matching
Achievement Badges and Onboarding workflows
More Corporate integration - Westpac and Govt Single Sign on.
Content for pilot
Prettification
Server side security
Activity Workflows
Te reo Māori translation.

Tutorials

1. Dev basics - git, get codebase, build, test, commit, pull request. Add to Contributors

2. Tour of the Code - pt1 Client side - React components, Pages

3. Tour of the Code - pt1 Server side - Express, Next, API and Mongo DB

4. Advanced topics: Redux, Asynch programming

5. More basics: Testing, Debugging.

Rewards & Swag

We have given attendees native trees but you should decide what is relevant to the locality.
We considered some trophies for MVP, Team Builder, Design, Inspiration etc. but didn’t get them organized. Also judging is very hard. SO I prefer to reward everyone and give time/space for people to say what they valued from the experience.
Any corporate swag should be of real value and not generate waste. e.g credits for AWS or iTunes etc. but its not really necessary

Voluntarily hits Wellington - June 2019