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Melbourne's first OpenAustralia hackfest

Hosted By: Open Australia

OpenAustralia.org, Australia's first eDemocracy website, would like to invite its friends, fans and volunteers to its first Melbourne hackfest.

The first OpenAustralia hackfest, held in Sydney in June, was a big success, attracting 50 volunteers. They worked on solving existing problems as well as starting new OpenAustralia projects including a mobile version of OpenAustralia - read all about the day on the OpenAustralia blog to get a taste of what the Melbourne hackfest will be like.

We're happy to announce that several of the founders of OpenAustralia will be making the trip to Melbourne so you can talk to them about the project, put forward your own ideas, and get to work right away!

If you're a software hacker, you can dive in and work on bugs, pick an item from the wishlist and start creating a new feature, or work on just about anything you'd like to to improve or extend OpenAustralia. The sky's the limit!

If you're a fan or user of OpenAustralia and you're not technically minded, fear not! Websites don't get better without people USING them and TESTING them to give us ideas on how to improve! If you're a journalist or someone who really loves statistics and databases, help us by coming up with crazy searches that push the limits of what OpenAustralia can do!

ThoughtWorks is kindly hosting the hackfest, which kicks off at 12 noon and will go until 5pm. Please note you'll need to bring your own laptop. A ThoughtWorks volunteer will meet hackfest attendees at 12 sharp to let them in the building, so please be on time.

Please feel free to forward this invitation to anyone you think might be interested - but note that due to the size of the room, we won't be able to accept more than 30 people for this event.

RSVP by Wednesday, 23 September please, so we can arrange nametags.

We look forward to working with you to make our democracy a little more open!

From the OpenAustralia team.

Date & Time:

Saturday, September 26 at 12:00 PM (+11)

Add to Calendar

Location:

ThoughtWorks

Level 15,
303 Collins Street,
(IOOF Building on corner of Collins and Elizabeth St)
Melbourne,
VIC 3000

Invitation Message Board

To add a comment, RSVP for the event!

Ricky Buchanan 09/15/09

Is there any way that people can usefully participate remotely or by telepresence for the Hackfest? I'm very interested in the OpenGovernment stuff but unable to attend.

Open Australia 09/15/09

Hi Ricky,

You're the second person to ask that! Let me ask the intrepid hacker team and get back to you. I suspect the answer will be yes, since a lot of the work we do is done online by folks spread around Australia.

Cheers,

Sarah

Ricky Buchanan 09/15/09

Sarah,

Thanks! I'll look forward to finding out. Pity this doesn't have a "subscribe" feature - concerned I'll miss your reply.

I'm actually very close, I live in St Kilda, but I'm bedbound due to disability so I can't come.

Open Australia 09/22/09

Hi Ricky,

I agree about the "reply" function, would be very helpful.

I have met you before (we also chatted about the Girl Geek Dinners in Melbourne) and I know of your work with Dreamwidth too.

I have checked with the OpenAustralia devs, and they've suggested that remote volunteers might want to join the Dev mailing list, but also jump into the IRC channel on the day of the hackfest.

Dev mailing list:

http://groups.google.com/group…ustralia-dev

IRC channel:

The IRC channel is #openaustralia on Freenode. If you don't already use IRC, you can use it through the web here:

http://webchat.freenode.net/?c…penaustralia

The hackfest starts at 12pm on Saturday - but I'd suggest IRC chat probably won't get started til around 12.30 to allow for some 'setting up' time.

I hope that helps!

Cheers,

Sarah

Adrian Lobo 09/08/09

Hi folks,

Would be interested in attending but the last Sat in Sept is footy grand final day! Was this clash an accident or a way to filter out the "true believers"?