Code for Ireland Launch Event

ChRoMe · 16-01-2014 2:51am #1

Anyone coming along to Dublin Castle this evening (Thursday) for it?

MyPeopleDrankTheSoup · 16-01-2014 4:56am

No. I'm surprised that'd be your thing tbh. These hackathons are a joke! This tweet regarding some Australian government hackathon sums up my feelings:

Hey cleaners, I'm holding a cleaning hackathon at my house this weekend. There will be cleaning mentors and lots of cleaning supplies.

https://twitter.com/taybenlor/status/402262523635712002

ChRoMe · 16-01-2014 5:03am

georgiecasey wrote: »

No. I'm surprised that'd be your thing tbh. These hackathons are a joke! This tweet regarding some Australian government hackathon sums up my feelings:

https://twitter.com/taybenlor/status/402262523635712002

Usually I recoil in horror at the idea of a hackathon, for the reasons suggested above.

I consider this event to be distinctly different as its attempting to provide software that could genuinely make people's lives and environment better.

MyPeopleDrankTheSoup · 16-01-2014 5:18am

fair enough. seems it's popular anyway, as registration is closed. https://twitter.com/codeforall_ire

i predict a lot of ideas people at it and not a lot of actual coders.
no apps jump out at me from the american version:
http://www.codeforamerica.org/apps/

do you've an idea yourself or you just heading along?

ChRoMe · 16-01-2014 5:41am

georgiecasey wrote: »

fair enough. seems it's popular anyway, as registration is closed. https://twitter.com/codeforall_ire

i predict a lot of ideas people at it and not a lot of actual coders.
no apps jump out at me from the american version:
http://www.codeforamerica.org/apps/

do you've an idea yourself or you just heading along?

I don't have an idea myself, I'm going along as a coder willing to donate some time. However only to something that I think will really help society at large or a very disadvantaged group.

ChRoMe · 16-01-2014 5:50am

http://www.codeforamerica.org/?cfa_app=adopt-a-hydrant-2 is a great example of the good I think this initiative can do.

KonFusion · 16-01-2014 5:25pm

I'll be there.

Will be wearing a blue short sleeve shirt with white floral patterns*.....

Say hello if ya spot me.

*Don't judge me

ChRoMe · 16-01-2014 6:12pm

KonFusion wrote: »

I'll be there.

Will be wearing a blue short sleeve shirt with white floral patterns*.....

Say hello if ya spot me.

*Don't judge me

Red hoody black jeans here

Mort5000 · 17-01-2014 6:11am

So how was it?

KonFusion · 17-01-2014 1:33pm

Mort5000 wrote: »

So how was it?

Good. (and in some ways, bad).

Few things grinded on me.

There was no info on the breakaway sessions before you arrived (and even then it wasn't quite clear)
I wrote my name and email down 3 times on the night. Someone now has to go off and input that data somewhere for 300 people. This should have been an online form etc
Very few devs from what I could gather. We had 4 in our breakaway session. Seemed to be more journo's and politicians than devs.
Very....'governmenty'... (anyone who's worked in the public sector will get where I'm coming from)

But on the pro's side, intentions all good. Good potential to create some meaningful work. The evening itself was pretty well organised, and free food and wine afterwards is always good

In our breakaway session we managed to put together a new website for it, in about 15 mins using Bootstrap as a base, which had we had the FTP details we could have had live on the site that evening

Overall a good start/launch with good intentions. It'll be interesting to see where it goes.

Mort5000 · 17-01-2014 1:42pm

Sounds mostly positive.
Any idea if there are more to come in the future?
Any need for C#, VB.NET, Oracle, SQL skills?

KonFusion · 17-01-2014 2:19pm

Mort5000 wrote: »

Sounds mostly positive.
Any idea if there are more to come in the future?
Any need for C#, VB.NET, Oracle, SQL skills?

There are yeah. I think they said they want to have 10 events in 2014.

As for the skills required...I've no idea tbh. All of the above? :rolleyes:

ChRoMe · 17-01-2014 2:36pm

KonFusion wrote: »

Good. (and in some ways, bad).

Few things grinded on me.
There was no info on the breakaway sessions before you arrived (and even then it wasn't quite clear)

I wrote my name and email down 3 times on the night. Someone now has to go off and input that data somewhere for 300 people. This should have been an online form etc

Very few devs from what I could gather. We had 4 in our breakaway session. Seemed to be more journo's and politicians than devs.

Very....'governmenty'... (anyone who's worked in the public sector will get where I'm coming from)

But on the pro's side, intentions all good. Good potential to create some meaningful work. The evening itself was pretty well organised, and free food and wine afterwards is always good

In our breakaway session we managed to put together a new website for it, in about 15 mins using Bootstrap as a base, which had we had the FTP details we could have had live on the site that evening

Overall a good start/launch with good intentions. It'll be interesting to see where it goes.

I joined the queuing application session and out of about 13 people just over half were developers. With the exception of one person I got a very good vibe and felt from it discussion that there were defo the skills required to pull it off.

I'm quite enthusiastic about the possibilities. It was with a few hours of my time on a rainy Thursday night.

Graham · 17-01-2014 3:00pm

When I went to look, all the tickets had gone. They should really think about splitting the ticket allocations into 2 streams with one of them reserved for tech/devs/designers etc.

Mort5000 · 17-01-2014 4:33pm

Silicon Republic article

Sparks · 17-01-2014 4:48pm

Why would someone writing an article for Silicon Republic feel the need to preface "Steve Jobs" with "(Former Apple CEO)"?

Mort5000 · 17-01-2014 5:47pm

Sparks wrote: »

Why would someone writing an article for Silicon Republic feel the need to preface "Steve Jobs" with "(Former Apple CEO)"?

So that when people read the article in 100 years (when Silicon Republic is of course still in existence) and they can't remember who Jobs was, it'll remind them.

jmcc · 18-01-2014 1:08am

Sparks wrote: »

Why would someone writing an article for Silicon Republic feel the need to preface "Steve Jobs" with "(Former Apple CEO)"?

Recycled press release? Some of the technology churnos might not know who Steve Jobs was.

Regards...jmcc

Sparks · 18-01-2014 3:40am

Ah lads, come on now

You might as well preface "iPhone" with "mobile telephony device with data communications abilities and a modicum of processing power"

ChRoMe · 18-01-2014 6:05pm

Sparks wrote: »

Ah lads, come on now You might as well preface "iPhone" with "mobile telephony device with data communications abilities and a modicum of processing power"

I get what you are saying, however I've always seen that as standard journalistic practice to be dis-ambiguous. I'm sure there is more than one person in tech called Steve Jobs.

Zipppy · 22-01-2014 6:29pm

Mort5000 wrote: »

Sounds mostly positive.
Any idea if there are more to come in the future?
Any need for C#, VB.NET, Oracle, SQL skills?

Next Code for Ireland event 22 February at Facebook HQ - some info on the website
I'd image their will be lots more techies at this one...

And all skills could be utilised...depends how you put them to use :rolleyes:

georgiecasey wrote: »

These hackathons are a joke! This tweet regarding some Australian government hackathon sums up my feelings:

Curious....why do you think hackathons are a joke ? the Australian tweet aside

Sparks · 22-01-2014 6:37pm

Zipppy wrote: »

Curious....why do you think hackathons are a joke ?

Perhaps because you don't see many other professions running events (barring events for charitable cases which explicitly state what they are), where professionals are asked to volunteer their services for free on commercial projects (that being rather counter to the whole notion of "professional").

It is not, to be fair, anywhere near as bad as jobbridge internships that require a PhD from their applicants or the sort of thing that @forexposure_txt documents, but personally I've always thought these kind of things have a massive potential for abuse and/or hype (read, "bull****"). I mean, if I wanted to work for free on cool ideas, it's not like I don't have a list of things I could stay home and work on. Hell, just go take a look at github and you'll find several lifetimes worth of projects that would be fun to hack on.

MyPeopleDrankTheSoup · 22-01-2014 6:59pm

sparks pretty much summed up my view.

to add, hackathons are grand if the coder enjoys them, sure that's all that matters. and/or if they feel like they're contributing to something.

what irks me is any humanities-studying, 'social entrepreneur', 'ideas' people taking any credit for anything. not that I know if they do, I'm making assumptions here!

if there's any prizes or presentations at the end or on the website, only the technical & design people should be listed, everybody else is superfluous.

Mort5000 · 22-01-2014 7:04pm

Zipppy wrote: »

And all skills could be utilised...depends how you put them to use :rolleyes:

Why are you rolling your eyes?

ChRoMe · 23-01-2014 1:20pm

georgiecasey wrote: »

everybody else is superfluous.

You had me up to there, thats just a blatantly false statement. Its a typically arragont statement from developers who don't release that without the biz dev people there is no one to pay our outrageous salaries!

stevenmu · 23-01-2014 3:07pm

Sparks wrote: »

where professionals are asked to volunteer their services for free on commercial projects

I've only read a little about this, so I'm not sure, but my understanding is that they should be "community" projects, which I would expect to be useful for the community but non-commercial in nature.

If they are commercial in nature then it is ridiculous to expect professionals to just volunteer their time.

Sparks · 23-01-2014 3:23pm

The first Code for Ireland meet-up that took place at Facebook’s Dublin headquarters in November has already led to the commencement of three app projects, including an emergency app that shows where all the defibrillators in Dublin are located, a queueing app aimed at avoiding long waits at the motor tax office, and a business location assessment app that will guide businesses on the best place to locate based on zoning, available property and other businesses in the area.

It might just be my cynical side having spent too much time watching the public accounts committee, but those three examples mentioned in the Silicon Republic coverage do not strike me as non-commercial. The first and second strike me as being public sector (the HSE or Department of Health, and the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government respectively to be exact), and the third as private sector, but all seem commercial in nature to me.

Perhaps you're correct and they're the exception and the fault is in the report and not the event; but if so the coverage is way off base and is portraying it as an event to get professional developers to work on commercial (if predominately public sector) applications for free.

stevenmu · 23-01-2014 3:41pm

Yeah, I see your point. The third does definitely sound commercial.

For the first two, while they are public sector, there's definitely a community aspect I think. I presume they're taking web service feeds already provided, or possibly scraping existing web sites, and just putting it in app form. Personally I'd prefer to see the government make data available through web sites/services and let the community build apps for whatever platforms are relevant to them.

Zipppy · 23-01-2014 3:57pm

stevenmu wrote: »

I've only read a little about this, so I'm not sure, but my understanding is that they should be "community" projects, which I would expect to be useful for the community but non-commercial in nature.

If they are commercial in nature then it is ridiculous to expect professionals to just volunteer their time.

Sparks wrote: »

It might just be my cynical side having spent too much time watching the public accounts committee, but those three examples mentioned in the Silicon Republic coverage do not strike me as non-commercial. The first and second strike me as being public sector (the HSE or Department of Health, and the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government respectively to be exact), and the third as private sector, but all seem commercial in nature to me.

Perhaps you're correct and they're the exception and the fault is in the report and not the event; but if so the coverage is way off base and is portraying it as an event to get professional developers to work on commercial (if predominately public sector) applications for free.

Very valid points .. however I'm looking at this from a different perspective..

1. Government and specifically local Government have lots and lots of ideas and concepts that they'd love to develop and distribute ON BEHALF of the community and citizens but alas lack of funding, resources and know how mean that these, possibly very beneficial ideas, will most likely never see daylight....and

2. Community groups and joe bloggs on the street have lots of ideas or needs that they'd love to see realised for the betterment of their community or society in general, but again lack of resources and know how mean that again these ideas will most likely never see daylight..

So along comes Code for Ireland (or another similar group / get together) and suddenly it MAY be possible to get some good done for society...suerly that's a good thing?

The vital ingredients are government / community / society being involved and identifying and agreeing on the actual NEEDS...
Obviously it's even more important that developers get involved as without them nothing will actually get done ..

So if it's community / societal needs I say great...

As for Commercial ideas .. I'd imagine that in the vast majority of cases commercialisation would not be possible /viable...

So if you're a developer with any development skills, why not get involved?
If an idea is proposed that is close to your heart and something you're interested in then work on that....any that you don't like simply steer clear of...
Also don't forget that if you're a young or inexperienced developer seeking employment, such initiatives can give you vital experience to put on your CV and maybe get you a job....just maybe...

Zipppy · 23-01-2014 3:59pm

stevenmu wrote: »

Yeah, I see your point. The third does definitely sound commercial.

For the first two, while they are public sector, there's definitely a community aspect I think. I presume they're taking web service feeds already provided, or possibly scraping existing web sites, and just putting it in app form. Personally I'd prefer to see the government make data available through web sites/services and let the community build apps for whatever platforms are relevant to them.

They do..to an extent..dublinked.ie

Initiatives like Code for Ireland will give the clout to get more data opened up....

ChRoMe · 23-01-2014 4:17pm

Sparks wrote: »

It might just be my cynical side having spent too much time watching the public accounts committee, but those three examples mentioned in the Silicon Republic coverage do not strike me as non-commercial. The first and second strike me as being public sector (the HSE or Department of Health, and the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government respectively to be exact), and the third as private sector, but all seem commercial in nature to me.

Perhaps you're correct and they're the exception and the fault is in the report and not the event; but if so the coverage is way off base and is portraying it as an event to get professional developers to work on commercial (if predominately public sector) applications for free.

I'm involved in the development of the queueing application, what exactly do you mean that they seem commercial in nature? Its quite an ambiguous comment.

There was one person in our group who was trying to talk about "monetisation" however the group generally dismissed that quickly. I have to admit I face palmed at the suggestion it reallly made me quite angry.

Code for Ireland Launch Event

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