Hacking at OHW23#

How will the projects be conducted?#

We encourage project ideas from participants! Feel free to discuss existing or new project ideas #ohw23_project Slack channel prior to the event. Once ideas begin to gel and collaborative groups begin to form, the group can start getting into the weeds using a Google Jamboard. Later the group needs to create and present a visual elevator speech using one Google Slide, create a project Slack channel that starts with ohw23_proj_ (say, ohw23_proj_upwelling), and create a Github repository (follow these instructions).

We’ve scheduled part of Day 1 and the early part of Day 2 for project ideation. After that, time not allocated to shared tutorials and discussions may be devoted to working on the projects - hacking!

Please look over the information below for guidance about projects, how to get started and the motivations for working on projects.

Project overview#

Collaborative projects are a key component of OceanHackWeek, in which you get to interact with others closely and apply new skills to make something exciting happen: it can be creating tools to streamline access of a particular data source, visualizing some high density data interactively, testing existing models with new data sources, or anything else you may want to do at the intersection of oceanography and data science.

Tips for getting started#

  • Potentially choose something that you’ve been interested but haven’t had the time or skills to do before, or something you can continue to work on post OceanHackWeek!

  • Hacking is a community activity! It’s okay to choose projects that you can’t accomplish alone as other people will be there to help you, both at OceanHackWeek and outside of it!

  • Help your group member: you might be the person they need to solve their problem, and vice versa.

  • When discussing, pitch your explanation to the least experienced hacker in the group, and you’ll end up better understanding what you’re trying to do, or need to revise your idea.

  • You can mix programming languages as needed in order to get started, but do check in with your project mentors and group members to make sure your efforts are straightforward to be absorbed into the project.

What is a Hack?#

A “hack” is a small project that aims to solve a specific problem using computational tools.

Examples of hacks include:

  • Build a working demo of a new or modified algorithm

  • Outline of a larger project, with some key features scoped

  • Visualization of an old dataset in a new manner

  • Modify an algorithm and apply it to a new dataset

  • Combine two pre-existing pieces of code to perform some new function

  • Create a tool to apply to work with existing code, datasets

  • Transform code from one language to another to use with other tools

  • Update old code to run faster, on new machines, and/or more efficiently

  • Extend an existing project with an additional feature

  • Simplify code to be more maintainable, aka “paying technical debt”

Why hack at OceanHackWeek?#

Increasingly, research and software development are conducted by groups of people with diverse skills and backgrounds. We believe this collaborative work leads to more innovative solutions to complex problems. At OceanHackWeek, our goal is to explore with you some of the skills needed to navigate technical and social challenges of working in these kinds of collaborative settings. We believe the best way to do so is to provide opportunities for you to gain hands-on experience in working together with others on a well-defined problem related to ocean sciences.