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Hyku & Hyrax Community Developer Training Camp October 2025

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 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. More information on the precise location will be available soon.

Getting There

Pittsburgh International Airport

Amtrak: Pittsburgh Union Station

Driving directions and parking information will be provided closer to the event.

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 Options

The training will have lunch each day included, with breakfast and dinner on your own. More information will be available closer to the event.

Other Activities

More information on other optional activities will be available closer to the event date.

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