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Whilst there's a certain association with the word 'hack' it doesn't really have this association for me in terms of a hack-day.

Popular perception of the word has associations with films such as War Games & Hackers where a 'hacker' gains unauthorised access to a computer system that he or she shouldn't be using.

In every day work environments the word has associations with a 'fudge' or a 'klunk' - maybe due to time constraints, lack of knowledge, or just plain laziness a developer maybe forced into doing something that really isn't considered best practice.

In a recent post on the GeekUp mailing list, Jon Spriggs, gave a good example of a genuine real world hack, whereby you have a problem keeping a door open, and you decide to put a shoe infront of it say. It's not a long term solution, but a means of getting a situation better in a clever way right here, right now.

However, in terms of what it means in terms of a hack-day my personal interpretation is that it's a chance to get a few people together, and collaborate on those ideas that everyone has, but just doesn't get time to implement in their normal course of the working week. It could be that it only goes as far as a proof of concept, or some further research and development into how something might work - that could then be presented for funding, or put together with other concepts as a new service, or it could be used towards charity goals, or maybe just idle curiousity.

The hack-day concept isn't new. The largest and most successful one I've heard of (and been to) was at Alexandra Palace in London and organised by the BBC and Yahoo. Hundreds of people and over 80 projects were started. They happen all the time though, and you can find out more by having a look at hackday.org.

What I'm proposing isn't on the scale of a large hack-day - though maybe we could culminate in an annual bash along those lines, but in having a series of mini-hack days throughout the year. This way we can build continuity and momentum into ideas and implementation outside the normal day-to-day work environments we exist in. With some overlap different people may turn up to each event, but there will be a common theme throughout.

There will be an event on Saturday, February 7th. It's also hoped that we will have more national collaboration day on March 7th, in co-operation with Rewired State's, National Hack The Government Day. Maybe further events will happen in co-ordination with other cities near Manchester ? Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield - HELLO.

Things like drinks and venue sponsors are very nice when they happen. But they don't need to in order for events to happen. Get few mates together, and you've got the basis of your event. Just see where it goes. Your local pub may be able to help out. In Manchester we're lucky enough to have the MDDA and places like The Las O Gowrie to help out, but I'm sure you can find similar venues wherever you are.

The important thing is to encourage collaboration in an environment where you can get away from our normal day to day work responsibilies and be creative in your ideas and thinking.


I'd love to hear your thoughts. Thanks for reading.

Ian

Image from xkcd.

Labels: collaboration, February, hack, Manchester, March, mcc-work-for-you, National Hack The Government Day, tyoc

Ok, So I've micro-blogged some thoughts on this on my twitter account, and I just wanted to add some initial thoughts on why I think collaboration and building teams to collaborate is the future, and why its worth having a big push forthis in 2009.

In Manchester, we organised a mini-hack day amongst some colleagues and ex-work mates at the end of 2008. The project we chose to kick off with was named MCC-Work-For-You. The idea being to have a series of hack days to keep progressing this project, and eventually to start further projects in a collaborative way - we already have a list with some nice ideas on.

So how do you get involved ? What is collaboration ?
What collaborative projects have you been involved with ?

It would be good to hear your thoughts on these.

How do we promote the collaborative conversation ?
Tag things with #tyoc (for the year of collaboration) and lets build this into a series of achievements. Talk is cheap, but producing and then promoting projects is better.

Lets do stuff!!!

Labels: 2009, collaboration, Manchester, mcc-work-for-you, tyoc

Alteris will be attending the Manchester Futuresonic Social Technologies Summit 20th - 22nd July. If you would like to meet up why not get in touch.

Thanks to John Keys and the MDDA for supporting alteris in our attendance.

Ian and Tom of Alteris attended the Manchester Simply Networking event in June, and met a lot of really interesting people involved in all types of business. We found it very useful for gaining an impression of what other business people in Manchester are up to. It's an event we will be visiting again in the future, so if you'd like to meet-up there let us know you are thinking of going.

alteris attends the Manchester PHP meetup.

alteris talks to other collaborators at Manchester bex seminar.

alteris floats the 'Manchester Internet & Software Developers Orange Collaboration idea' For more info see the Orange Collaboration page.