QA Hackathon 2014

QA hackathoncommunity Mon 17 March 2014

It pains me to admit this, but RIBASUSHI was right. As we rode on the train together into Lyon, he told me that for him the hackathons are mainly about having discussions, with the hacking coming later. "Pah!", I said, "I'm here to hack"...

But he's right, the big value of the QA Hackathon is that brings together 30 or so people who care about Perl, CPAN and the toolchain, and hothouses them for 3, or in this case 4, days. Some people came with very specific things to work on, and did so very diligently. But there were lots of ideas bouncing around, leading to new things, all generally good for Perl. And so often when problems came up, people who could help were right there.

I went with some very specific things I wanted to discuss, and a too-long-list of things to try and get done. I went off-piste quite a lot, but have come away with a long todo list that I'm fired up to get working on.

As an aside, I had too many slightly embarrassing moments when I'd say "oh, you're the person who does XYZ!". I had only met 3 of the attendees before this weekend, and many of them have been meeting up, and working together, for a good few years. But I was made to feel very welcome, and the only person making me feel like a n00b was myself.

Final observations:

Thank you to the sponsors; I couldn't have gone without their support. Thanks to DAGOLDEN for initially suggesting I go, BOOK for pushing me to make it happen, and my partner for letting me leave her home alone with the kids for 4+ days. And thank you BOOK and ELBEHO for organising it, and Wendy for all her help in keeping us fed and more.

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