CCSCNE 2014 MouseTrap Hackfest

Time and Place

April 25, 2014; 2:30 PM - Midnight

CCSCNE 2014, Providence College

Room TBD

Description

Students and faculty are given the opportunity to immerse themselves in the MouseTrap project. There will be members of the MouseTrap community on hand to help participants

• Set up a development environments
• Become familiar with the tools of the trade
• Engage the development community

Sponsors

• Red Hat
• GNOME
• GNOME Accessibility
• NSF

Facilitators

• Joanie Diggs - GNOME Accessibility Group
• Heidi Ellis - MouseTrap Maintainer
• Stoney Jackson - MouseTrap co-Maintainer
• Karl Wurst - Open-Source Educator
• Several student MouseTrap developers

FAQ

What is a hackfest?

There are different definitions of hackfest (and/or hackathon, codefest, etc.). The essence of a hackfest is a bunch of programmers getting together to code with a common purpose. Some hackfests are competitions. Some are educational. Some are social events.

This hackfest is educational and social. The goal is to give participants a chance to immerse themselves into an open source project.

What is MouseTrap?

MouseTrap is a GNOME accessibility project to allow individuals to control the mouse pointer using a webcam. Please see the MouseTrap website for more details.

What programming language does the project use?

Python. But you don't need to know Python to participate in the hackfest!

1. Much of what we'll be doing will not require knowledge of Python.
2. There are many ways to contribute to open-source projects other than code (50-ways)
3. It's an easy language that can be learned on the fly. And there will be many there that can help you.

What will I learn?

A little about a lot:

• Version control
• Issue trackers
• Who to talk to and how to reach them

Can students participate? Can faculty participate?

Yes and yes.

Can I come late? Can I leave early? Can I come, go, and come back again later?

Yes, yes, and yes.