Hydra Connect January 2014

What is Hydra Connect?

Hydra Connect (hashtag #HydraConnect) is a chance for Hydra Project participants to gather in one place at one time, with an emphasis on synchronizing efforts, technical development, plans, and community links. As the community expands, it is becoming clear that not every Partner will make every meeting, but there is value in ensuring cross-connections across the community, and we'd be well served to have at least one meeting where everyone shows up. Put another way, if a Partner could attend only one meeting this academic year, this would be it.

The meeting will include:

  • training opportunities for developers and managers
  • demonstrations & lightning talks
  • Introductions & matchmaking
  • (lots of) unstructured times / open room format for...
    • coordinated development
    • taking action on strategic plan items
    • documentation updates
    • investigating patterns

Attendee List

93 Individuals representing over 35 institutions will be attending Hydra Connect 2014.  We've posted the  HydraConnect 2014 Attendee List in case you want to get in touch with other attendees after the event.

Declan Fleming from UCSD has posted a lot of photos from the meeting here

Directions & Parking

All conference sessions will be held at the Price Center on the University of California San Diego main campus. Maps of the Price Center and walking direction from our host hotel, the La Jolla Sheraton, are available on our San Diego Info Page. The Price Center is approximately 20 minutes by foot from the La Jolla Sheraton. If you are staying at an alternate location and will be driving to campus, visitor parking is available at various locations on campus, please follow the directions to the Visitior Information Center at the Gilman Drive campus entrance

Registration

A registration and information desk will be available in the Red Shoe room on the second level of the Price Center all day Tuesday. Wednesday registration will take place outside Ballroom East where the main plenary sessions will occur.

Schedule

We've put together a  HC2014 Schedule v1.4.pdf to give you a high-level view of what will be happening when.  Keep in mind that Unconference Breakouts on Thursday afternoon and Friday will not be finalized until Wednesday afternoon.

Code of Conduct

We want Hydra Connect to be a fun, informative, engaging event for all our participants. We've got a few strategies to help make this happen:

  1. We've planned lots of great content and provided plenty of room for community engagement - see the fantastic schedule lineup below!

  2. We encourage everyone to apply the Hydra community principles of openness, inquiry, and respect in their interactions at the event.

  3. We're pleased to announce that we have officially adopted an Anti-Harassment Policy .

If you have any questions or concerns at the event, please feel free to reach out to any of the planning team members or community helpers . They should should be easy to find and will all have an identifier on their name-badges.

Tuesday Workshops

We will be holding a variety of workshops on Tuesday. We’ve themed the workshops in developer, manager, and advanced topic groupings, but we won’t be checking anyone’s credentials at the door, so feel free to attend any workshops that seem interesting to you. There’s no sign-up or pre-registration required, but seating capacity in most sessions is limited to 25, so show up early to grab a good seat.

Hydra for Managers - Hydra Connect workshop

Plenary Sessions

Wednesday and Thursday morning will consist of plenary sessions where we’ve curated a fantastic selection of panel discussions, demos, and other presentations. Wednesday morning will focus on the current state of Hydra with a panel discussion, selected demos and lightning talks. Thursday morning will cover the future of Hydra, the Hydra Strategic Plan, and related topics including Fedora 4. We’re hoping these sessions will spark lots of conversation that will feed into Thursday and Friday’s un-conference sessions.

Lightning Talks

Both Wednesday and Thursday will have time set aside for lightning talks and we encourage you consider showing off your latest Hydra successes (or share your challenges). We've set up a Sign up:  Sign up here for a 7 minute lightning talk on Wednesday or Thursday. 

HydraConnect 2014 Lightning Talk Presentations

Poster, Demo, and Q&A sessions

We’ve scheduled two interactive sessions for Wednesday afternoon. We invite anyone who wants to bring a poster (upt to 24” x 36”), handouts, set up a laptop for a demo, scrounge a white-board and talk about your latest project. We’ll have two sessions so that everyone gets a chance to show-and-tell during one session and check out other folks’ work. 

Unconference Breakouts

The main focus of this conference is collaboration and information sharing, so we’ve left lots of time and space for breakouts and ad-hoc working sessions. We’ve set up a google moderator poll for topics folks would like to see covered. If you don’t see what you’re interested in or you’d like to host a session, please add it to the list. Vote for sessions you’d like to attend, add your name to sessions you’re willing to help facilitate, and ask questions and comment on sessions so we can clarify what should be covered by each topic. We won’t lock the schedule until the votes are in and we hold our unconference planning session on Wednesday afternoon. We’ve blocked out Thursday afternoon and all day Friday for unconference sessions. If you know folks you want to connect with, be sure to add a session to the poll and have your collaborators vote for it.

Here's the Unconference Schedule: HC2014 Schedule v1.5 - breakouts.pdf

Here is Running an Unconference Session

HydraConnect 2014 Unconference Sessions

Meals

We're planning to have coffee and pastries at Registration on Tuesday and Wednesday morning.  Other meals will generally be on your own with the exception of Wednesday evening when we will be providing a catered dinner for conference attendees at Porter's Pub right on the UCSD campus.  There are a variety of great dining options right in the Price Center and within walking distance elsewhere on campus.  We've set up a Tuesday night dinner signup sheet for folks who might be interested in making some new connections and exploring dining options in Del Mar, La Jolla, or elsewhere off campus.

Social Events


Conference feedback survey results

HydraConnectJan2014SurveyResults.zip