Hyku & Hyrax Community Developer Training Camp October 2025
Hyku & Hyrax Community Developer Training Camp, October 7th - 10th, 2025, University of Pittsburgh
Join a cohort of up to 14 developers for 3.5 days of onsite training. You’ll learn together through hands-on activities, guided by participants' own needs and curiosity, with an up-to-date curriculum focused on preparing developers to contribute to Hyku and supporting codebases including Hyrax.
Who should attend? This training opportunity is open to developers and programmers at any level, and with any amount of experience with Hyrax or Hyku. The only prerequisite is an existing familiarity with Ruby on Rails.
Event Overview
How to Attend
Fill out this form by September 8th to secure a spot at the training camp. There are 11 seats available, and those who are interested but do not secure a seat will be put on the waitlist. Registration will be accepted in the order received, and a confirmation email will be sent within 1 business day.
There is no registration fee for this training opportunity. The costs for content development and revision, development environment creation, delivery from a professional onsite trainer, and three days of lunches are all being covered by contributions from both the Samvera Foundation (paid for through Samvera Partner annual dues) and the Sustaining Hyku community project.
In exchange, the Samvera Board is asking that each attendee’s institution commit to providing 80 hours (one two week sprint) of volunteer developer participation in Hyrax and/or Hyku community maintenance sprints in 2026. The goal of this commitment is to help attendees maintain their connection to the software and their cohort; apply what they learned to support community-maintained code; and jump-start further participation in Hyrax and Hyku community contributions from a greater variety of institutions who rely on Hyrax and Hyku community code.
About the Trainer
The trainer for this event is Mark Bussey from Data Curation Experts, LLC. Mark holds a Master's Degree in Music Education. He believes strongly in structuring student-driven, hands-on learning experiences. Mark has led over 15 highly successful Samvera camps and workshops over the past decade.
Samvera Event Code of Conduct & Community Guidelines
The Samvera Code of Conduct applies within all community spaces, alongside the Community Guidelines. All participants are expected to review and adhere to these guidelines.
Questions?
Please contact the Samvera Community Manager, heather@samvera.org, with any questions.
Logistics
Location
The training will be held on the campus of the University of Pittsburgh:
HILLMAN LIBRARY
255 Conference Room
3960 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh PA, 15260
Entering Hillman Library using the ground floor entrance off Schenley Drive, across from The Porch café. Take the elevators to get to the 2nd floor, which are in the hallway to the left of the Donald S. Wood Service Desk. Exiting the elevator on the 2nd floor, turn left. At the end of the elevator hallway, turn right. The room will be on your left right past the quarter round seating area.
Getting There
Pittsburgh International Airport
Amtrak: Pittsburgh Union Station
Pittsburgh Regional Transit (PRT), Pittsburgh’s public transportation system, is available for use, with applicable fares, to and from the Pittsburgh International Airport, around the University of Pittsburgh and Oakland area, and around the local area of Pittsburgh.
For more information, schedules, trip planner, real-time map, and rider fare, visit
Website: http://rideprt.org
Mobile Ticketing information:
https://www.rideprt.org/fares-and-passes/mobileticket/
Hotel Options
There are no hotel blocks for this event, but there are two hotels within walking distance of the training location on campus.
Hilton Garden Inn Pittsburgh University Place, 3454 Forbes Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15213
Courtyard Pittsburgh University Center, 100 Lytton Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15213
Meals and dining in Oakland
There is a wide array of dining spots located in Oakland and around Pitt’s campus. Most dining spots are located along Forbes Avenue, within a short distance from Hillman Library.
Here are just a few of our favorite options.
Breakfast-oriented: Divvy Coffee & Buns, Dunkin, Pamela’s Diner, Panera
Bread, Redhawk Coffee Roasters, Starbucks, The Porch
Lunch-oriented: Raising Cane’s, CHiKN, Chipotle, El Jefe’s Taqueria, Five
Guys, Hello Bistro, Jimmy John’s, Oishii Bento, Piada Italian Street Food,
Primanti Bros., Root’s Natural Kitchen, Stack’d, The Columbian Spot, The Porch,
Dinner-oriented: El Jefe’s Taqueria, Primanti Bros., Spirits & Tales, Stack’d, The
Columbian Spot, The Porch
Saxby’s Café, located on the 1 st floor of Hillman Library, opens at 9 am and
serves beverages, breakfast pastries, and packaged snacks. Forbes Street
Market has a small selection of grocery items, along with grab-and-go
options for breakfast and lunch.
On-campus dining spots also accept credit card payments. A list of on-
campus dining locations can be navigated here:
https://dineoncampus.com/pitt/campus-dining-map
Things to do near campus
University of Pittsburgh’s Cathedral of Learning
4200 Fifth Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15260 (400 ft. from Hillman Library)
Website: http://tour.pitt.edu/tour/cathedral-learning
Carnegie Museum of Natural History & Carnegie Museum of Art
4400 Forbes Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15213 (.2 mi from Hillman Library)
Website: http://carnegiemnh.org Website: http://cmoa.org
Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens
1 Schenley Drive, Pittsburgh, PA 15213 (.3 mi from Hillman Library)
Website: http://phipps.conservatory.org
Visit Carnegie Museums’ and Phipps’ websites for hours and price of admissions.
High Level Syllabus
HOMEWORK: Download, Install, and Launch the development environment prior to class (with pre-class assistance Day-1 prior to class - usually during a donut and coffee gathering period)
Oct 7 MORNING
Survey participant goals, brief personal and institutional introductions
Hands-on deposit and UI-based exercisesRun test suite
LUNCH - catered
Oct 7 AFTERNOON
Hyku Stack walkthrough - break into teams and teams present components such as Solr, Persistence, IIIF, Actor Stack, Background jobs, etc.
*Metadata field additions exercise - part 1
[OPTIONAL GROUP DINNER]
Oct 8 MORNING
Metadata field additions - part 2 & 3
LUNCH - catered
Oct 8 AFTERNOON
Samvera in production - model production environment; participant presentations on existing infrastructure and operations at home institutions
Collaborative development - overview of community practices and processes
Break into teams of 2-4 participants, develop initial backlogs for Day 3 mini sprints
Oct 9 MORNING
Mini-sprint 1 & 2 (Approximately 2 hours each: prioritization, develop, test, release)
LUNCH - catered in training room, working lunch with teams
Oct 9 AFTERNOON
Mini-sprint 3
Sprint Demos - teams present their work, challenges, and learning to one another
[OPTIONAL GROUP DINNER]
Oct 10 MORNING
Review participant goals from Day-1
Participant inventory of insights, new knowledge, and institutional goals
Review "How to Connect" with the community