DMS has a lot of specific needs when it comes to IT infrastructure and we’ve outgrown some of the systems that have helped us run the organization. This hackathon is a chance for us to make big improvements to the often overlooked parts of the organization, while having fun and eating junk food.

While this event will primarily be software focused, there will also be hardware (arduino, rpi, circuit design, etc) and plain old elbow grease stuff to do as well.

Event starts Saturday December 14th at 10am and runs until midnight (or later). We’ll spend the first hour or so figuring out what projects we can accomplish in a day and then break off into teams to get them done.

Food (likely pizza!) and a small selection of soda will be provided, feel free to bring your own source of caffeine or buy something in the galley.

Project ideas

Makermanager rewrite (to use newer CakePHP framework)

I have some groundwork already laid for this.

I have some groundwork already laid for this. Access control (badge) system

Either improving the existing software/hardware or building/kit-bashing something new

Either improving the existing software/hardware or building/kit-bashing something new Project storage system rewrite

Running ethernet cable and putting in drops

Reprogramming phones/phone-system

Calendar software improvements

These are just some examples off the top of my head, if you’ve got something in mind come on out and we’ll get it built.

You don’t need to be a software engineer with decades of experience to write software for DMS, some of the most useful things we have are simple PHP and Python scripts. I’ll also be around all day writing software and providing planning, deployment and design guidance to teams so we can keep things moving. The goal is blast through any roadblocks quickly by having everyone in the same place.

Please come out and help us make DMS run better than ever! If you’ve got any questions feel free to PM me or ask in this thread. If your idea requires hardware for a Proof of Concept, let me know ahead of time and I’ll see what I can do.