Running an IETF Hackathon

2.1. Agenda

The IETF Hackathon is a strenuous event. Though not a competition, participants want to make the most of their time together, much as with the IETF meeting in general. Competitive Hackathons typically run non-stop for on the order of 40 hours. There is a strict deadline and teams are judged and winners declared at the end. Afterward everyone is wiped out and heads off to briefly celebrate or commiserate, but mainly to recuperate. As the IETF Hackathon serves as the start of the overall IETF meeting, we aim to strike a compromise that provides enjoy time to get valuable work accomplished without exhausting themselves before the main IETF meeting even starts. While some people participate in the Hackathon only, the majority of people remain and plan to be actively engaged in the rest of the IETF meeting.¶

The typical agenda is as follows:¶

Saturday before IETF meeting week
    08:30: Room open for setup by project champions
    09:00: Room open for all - Pastries and coffee provided
    09:30: Hackathon kickoff
    09:45: Form Teams
    12:30: Lunch provided
    15:30: Afternoon break - Snacks provided
    19:00: Dinner provided
    22:00: Room closes

Sunday before IETF meeting week
    08:30: Room opens - Pastries and coffee provided
    12:30: Lunch provided
    13:30: Hacking stops, prepare brief presentation of project
    14:00: Project presentations to other participants
    15:45: Closing remarks and opportunities for next time
    16:00: Hackathon ends
    17:00: Tear down complete

The time on Saturday morning provides team champions time to setup and participants time to socialize and learn more about projects and team they might want to join. The kickoff presentation and formalities are kept to minimum to leave as much time as possible for team to work together with their team on their projects. The proximity of teams to each other fosters communication and collaboration across teams as well.¶

Lunch and dinner are provided as a convenience and an incentive to remain at the Hackathon. Participants are free to come and go as they like. It is well understood and accepted that there are other things vying for time and that meeting with friends or colleagues outside of the Hackathon is an entirely reasonable thing to do.¶

The room closes Saturday evening to give hotel staff unfettered access to the room and to encourage people to pace and take care of themselves. There are no rules against continuing work on Hackathon projects outside of the Hackathon room. Similarly, working on projects long before and after the Hackathon is allowed and encouraged.¶

The end of the Hackathon on Sunday is driven by other IETF meeting events. There typically are Newcomer events that start at 16:00. The IETF Hackathon typically includes many newcomers in its list of participants. It is important to provide them time to participate in the Newcomer events. The opening reception typically start at 17:00, and we want to make it easy for all Hackathon participants to join that as well.¶

Hackdemo Happy Hour (ref) and the Code Lounge (ref) exist to facilitate ongoing discussion and work on projects beyond the official end of the Hackathon weekend.¶

2.2. Hackdemo Happy Hour

Hackdemo Happy Hour provides an opportunity for more in depth sharing and discussion than is possible within the time constraints of the result presentation that occur at the end of the Hackathon. This opportunity is made available to all teams. As with the results presentation, participation is optional.¶

Initially, we did something similar as part of Bits and Bites. This worked well for the Hackathon but the Bits and Bites event was eventually abandoned for other reasons. Hackdemo Happy Hour was created as a low cost, informal event to provide a venue for the IETF community to engage with the Hackathon teams in more in depth discussions related to their projects.¶

Hackdemo Happy Hour is typically Monday evening, roughly from 18:00 - 19:30, often overlapping a bit with the last working group session of the day but continuing long enough to allow everyone an opportunity to join. The goal is to make it convenient to attend by not conflicting with other meetings but also no running too late into the night.¶

Light snacks and non alcoholic beverages are provided, and a cash bar is available to align with the spirit of a happy hour.¶

2.3. Code Lounge

The Code Lounge provides space for groups to gather and continue to collaborate on running code after the Hackathon. It is typically in the IETF Lounge and open the same hours as the IETF Lounge. Champions are encouraged to look at the final agenda and determine time slots best suited to ensure successful attendance of Code Lounge sessions as well as any traditional working group sessions. It is okay for multiple teams to sign up for the same time slots. This is in fact encouraged for work that spans multiple working groups or projects.¶

2.4. Code Sprint

Some efforts were made to have the Hackathon and the Code Sprint work together or potentially be combined into a single event focusing on the development of IETF protocols and IETF internal tools. There is some concern that the events currently compete for resources. There is also a great deal of synergistic potential. Several Hackathon projects, such as those related to YANG model validation, involve the creation or modification of IETF tools.¶

The Code Sprint existed long before the Hackathon and has its own identity and way of doing things. The Code Sprint organizers are against combining the events and potentially losing this identity the benefits of a customized event. The practice that exists today is to locate the events physically close to each other to facilitate switching back and forth between the two events.¶

2.5. Online Only

The IETF 107 Hackathon was originally scheduled to be the weekend at the start of the IETF meeting in Vancouver. When COVID-19 hit and it became clear the IETF meeting could not occur in person, the Hackathon already had 23 projects and 176 registrations. With only 10 days until the anticipated start of the Hackathon, a survey went out to the Hackathon community, including all project champions and registered participants, to see if they wanted to participate in the Hackathon exactly as planned except with everyone participating remotely rather than in person. A relatively small number of people expressed interest in participating, with even fewer wanting to continue to champion their projects. The fact that the Hackathon was planned for the weekend before the IETF meeting and in the local time zone, both of which were historically very convenient and attractive to Hackathon participants, suddenly became huge obstacles. Consequently, the IETF 107 Hackathon was cancelled.¶

We knew more in advance that IETF 108 would be an online only meeting. We moved and expanded the schedule to run the entire work week before the rest of the IETF meeting. The Hackathon kickoff was set for Monday, the closing for Friday, with all the time in between left for individual project teams to arrange to meet how and when was most convenient for them. The kickoff and closing sessions were schedule to align with the time frame established for the IETF 108 meeting. All of this was, of course, not ideal, and it worked much better for some people than for others, but at least everyone knew the plan and corresponding time commitment well in advance and had the ability to plan accordingly.¶

We ultimately had 19 projects and almost 300 registrations. It is hard to say how many people actually participated and for how long, but many projects were able to get substantial work done. For the closing, 10 teams produced and shared presentations summarizing their findings and achievements. All presentations as well as the agenda and a recording of the closing session are available via the IETF 108 Hackathon wiki. This level of participation was strong enough to be considered a success and justify including the Hackathon in future online only IETF meetings.¶

Hackdemo Happy Hour and the Code Lounge are not applicable for online only Hackathons.¶

3.1. Sponsorship

The initial funding model was to have Hackathon sponsors sign up to sponsor and fund the Hackathon for one year. As part of starting the Hackathon, Cisco volunteered to sponsor and fund the Hackathon for its first year (i.e., three Hackathons, one at each IETF meeting during a calendar year). This sponsorship was to rotate. Huawei volunteered to sponsor the second year of the Hackathon. After the second year, a sponsor for the 3rd year was not found. However, the Hackathon had become a proven success. Consequently, the IETF decided to fund the Hackathon as part of the IETF meeting, with Hackathon sponsorship being on a best effort basis.¶

Online only Hackathons in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and increased remote participating in general, result in increased cloud infrastructure requirements that make Hackathon sponsorship more attractive to cloud infrastructure providers.¶

Hackathon sponsorship is available at different levels as part of being an IETF Running Code Sponsor.¶

3.2. Expenses

The primary expenses associated with the Hackathon are those for hosting an in-person event, e.g., meeting space, food and beverage, etc. It is often challenging to quantify the portion of this associated with the Hackathon from that incurred for the IETF meeting overall.¶

4.1. Project Pitches

The project pitches were 5-10 minute presentations by a champion of a project describing what they wanted to do and how they proposed to accomplish it. This gave everyone in the room a better understanding of all the projects and helped participants match themselves with appropriate projects. This worked well when we had a small number of projects, but it became unwieldy as the number of projects increased. As knowledge of the Hackathon grew and advanced planning became more common, many participants knew exactly which team they planned to join and wanted to get to work as quickly as possible rather than spend a couple hours listening to presentations. Project pitches were dropped from the Hackathon. Champions are encouraged to share this type of information in advance via the Meeting Wiki (Section 5.4) instead.¶

4.2. Results Summaries

The results summaries are brief presentation by each team of what problem they tried to solve, what they achieved, and highlights that include lessons learned, feedback to associated working groups, and collaboration with open source communities and other standards organizations. They also highlight individuals who are participating in their first IETF Hackathon or first IETF event to facilitate their introduction into the IETF community. The production and presentation of results summaries is optional. Fortunately, despite the lack of awards and prizes, most teams participate.¶

As with the project pitches, results summaries can become unwieldy as the number of projects increases. With this in mind, the total time for all results summaries is limited to 2 hours. The maximum duration of each presentation is calculated based on the number teams that have indicated the desire to present. This maximum is strictly enforced to ensure all teams have the opportunity to present their results. Maximum durations of 3-5 minutes are typical.¶

4.3. Upload to GitHub

All presentation are uploaded to the GitHub repo created the Hackathon, e.g., https://github.com/ietf-hackathon/ietf110-project-presentations. The contents of this repo are used as the source for all project presentations at the end of the Hackathon and remain as a reference after the Hackathon.¶

One must be a member of the IETF-Hackathon GitHub org to upload a new presentation or update/replace an existing presentation.¶

To be added as a member, presenters are asked to¶

• include the name by which they are known in their GitHub profile¶
• enable two factor authentication (2FA)¶
• send your GitHub user name to the Chair(s)¶

Presenters are asked to do this at their earliest convenience as the Chair(s) typically get very busy as the start of presentations approaches.¶

4.4. Presenting in Person

Presentations are run from a shared ChromeBook at the front of the Hackathon room. This Chromebook is provided by the Secretariat.¶

4.5. Presenting Remotely

Remote presenters are welcome to run their own presentations using the screen sharing functionality in Meetecho. Alternatively, the Hackathon Chairs can share the presentation and advance slides for the presenter.¶

5.1. Datatracker

The datatracker supports the notion of Teams that are not a part of the standards development process. The Hackathon exists as one such Team. From the datatracker menu, navigate to "Other" -> "Active Teams" -> "Hackathon". Here exists a datatracker space for the Hackathon similar to what is available for working groups, including meeting materials, agendas, etc. Initially, there was some attempt to copy materials hosted in GitHub to the datatracker. Now this is done only when required for integration with other IETF tooling, including:¶

• requesting sessions for the Hackathon kickoff and closing, and for Hackdemo Happy Hour¶
• posting agendas¶

5.2. IETF Website

5.3. Registration

Registration for the Hackathon is through the IETF meeting registration system. Participant registration for the Hackathon is¶

• independent of participation registration for the meeting¶
• free¶
• required¶

As with meeting registration, registrants for the Hackathon acknowledge the Note Well during the registration process.¶

5.4. Meeting Wiki

The meeting wiki serves as the primary source of information for each Hackathon.¶

5.5. Mailing List

The Hackathon mail list, hacakthon@ietf.org, is used for all email communication and announcement related to the Hackathon. All registrants and given the option to subscribe to the list. Anyone interested in staying up to date on the Hackathon is able to subscribe at any time.¶

5.6. GitHub

The IETF-Hackathon is used to share code, presentations, and other artifacts at IETF Hackathons. The Hackathon Chairs are responsible for administering the GitHub org.¶

Code for Hackathon projects often exist elsewhere, which is perfectly fine. Anyone needing a place to host code for the Hackathon can request the creating of a repository for their project.¶

A repository is created and maintained by the Chairs for each Hackathon, e.g., https://github.com/ietf-hackathon/ietf110-project-presentations. This repo is for participants to upload project presentations. The contents of this repo are used as the source for all project presentations at the end of the Hackathon and remain as a reference after the Hackathon.¶

5.7. Meetecho

Meetecho is used for the kickoff and closing sessions of the Hackathon. This provides many capabilities, including the following:¶

• allows participants to join Hackathon sessions in person or remotely¶
• validate registration of participants at time of joining Hackathon sessions¶
• enable remote presentations of project results¶
• capture recording of Hackathon sessions¶

5.8. Network

Access to the IETF network is an important aspect of the Hackathon. The IETF network provides unfettered Internet access that is not typical within many residential, corporate, and university environments. For many of IETF participants and projects, access to the Internet and each other via wireless access to the IETF network is sufficient. However, due to the nature of the work done in the IETF, wired access and special networking capabilities are often required.¶

The NOC has graciously met the needs of the Hackathon since its inception and continues to add more capabilities over time. Champions are able to request in advance wired access and special networking functionality, including static IPv4 and IPv6 addresses, IPv6 only networking, a closed user group, NAT64, and IPv6PD. All of this, and the IETF network in general, is made available by the start of the Hackathon and in advance for setup to the extent possible.¶

5.9. Webex

Champions can request a Webex account they can use to schedule meetings for their team. These are similar to the Webex accounts allocated to working group chairs to be used for virtual interim meetings. An account can be requested by a team champion at any time. Accounts remain active and available throughout the duration of the Hackathon and the associated IETF meeting. A project name may be used in place of "Working Group Name" in the request form.¶

5.10. Gather

Gather facilitates virtual hallway interaction during IETF meetings. A dedicated area within the overall space is created by the Secretariat for the Hackathon. The area includes tables, identified by letters of the alphabet, that teams are free to self assign and use as and when they like. Eight to ten seats around each table facilitate group discussions within the team. A whiteboard or shared notes tablet (via CodiMD) at tables facilitates sharing of information within the team. The tables also facilitate collaboration across teams. One cautionary note, Gather has relative high network bandwidth and CPU requirements, and as such may not be well suited for some Hackathon participants.¶

The Gather space remains available between IETF meetings, with incremental improvements and additions made during this time. The space is cleaned about a month prior to the start of the next meeting, removing anything left over from the previous meeting. Hackathon teams are encouraged to make a copy of anything they want to retain within a week of the end of the IETF meeting.¶

6.1. IETF Survey Results

For each IETF meeting, there is a post event survey that often includes a question or two about the Hackathon, e.g., IETF 106 Survey Results.¶

6.2. Hackathon Survey Results

Hackathon specific surveys have been used on some occasions to obtain more detailed feedback about the Hackathon from the IETF community. This has been especially useful for feedback on online only Hackathons. Survey have been short with most questions being optional, e.g., IETF 110 Hackathon Survey Results.¶

7.1. Hackathon Chair(s)

The role of a Hackathon chair is similar to that of a working group chair. As with working groups, it is typically best to have co-chairs share responsibilities and workload. The Chairs work very closely with the Secretariat on all responsibilities. Key responsibilities include:¶

• Organize and deliver a Hackathon at each IETF meeting, soliciting help from all other roles to do much of the heavy lifting¶
• Encourage and provide guidance to champions who volunteer to lead projects¶
• Maintain the Hackathon wiki, e.g., https://trac.ietf.org/trac/ietf/meeting/wiki/110hackathon, and all of its child pages.¶
• Moderate hackathon@ietf.org email list¶
• Request sessions for the Hackathon opening and closing in the IETF meeting¶
• Emcee the Hackathon, including the opening and closing sessions and announcements in between¶
• Create and manage the GitHub repo used for each Hackathon, e.g., https://github.com/ietf-hackathon/ietf110-project-presentations¶
• Serve as main point of contact for all Hackathon questions and concerns¶

7.2. Secretariat

Key responsibilities include:¶

• Configure and manage Hackathon registration system¶
• Maintain Hackathon web page¶
• Create and maintain web page for each Hackathon, e.g., https://www.ietf.org/how/runningcode/hackathons/110-hackathon/¶
• Create wiki page for each Hackathon, e.g., https://trac.ietf.org/trac/ietf/meeting/wiki/110hackathon. This is initialized and updated at times by the Secretariat, but the Chair(s) are ultimately responsible for maintaining it.¶
• Handle venue logistics for Hackathon, Hackdemo Happy Hour, and Code Lounge (e.g., reserve room, food and beverages, AV, etc.)¶
• Internal IETF promotion (e.g., email messages to IETF community)¶
• Assist with external outreach, as needed, including finding sponsors¶
• Validate Hackathon registrations for in-person participants, including issuing badges and participant t-shirts when available¶

7.3. Sponsor

Key responsibilities include:¶

• Provide some funding to help offset costs of Hackathon (either per meeting or per year, depending on model)¶
• Optionally provide t-shirts or other giveaways¶
• Optionally provide support staff to assist with Hackathon¶

Key benefits include:¶

• Sponsor logo on Hackathon t-shirts¶
• Sponsor logo on Hackathon signage¶
• Sponsor logo on Hackathon webpage and wiki¶
• Sponsor logo and call out in Hackathon kickoff and closing presentation¶
• Sponsor logo and call out in IETF Plenary presentation¶
• Sponsor logo and call out in Hackathon recap on IETF blog¶
• Recognition in IETF community for helping the IETF Hackathon remain free and open to everyone¶

7.4. Champions of Projects

Champions of projects are the key to a successful Hackathon. Key responsibilities for champions include:¶

• Volunteer to lead a project at the Hackathon¶
• Serve as primary contact for the project¶
• Add and manage information on the Hackathon wiki for the project¶
• Promote the project to appropriate groups inside IETF and outside as well¶
• Welcome and organize members of the team¶
• Provide focus, guidance, and leadership for the project¶

7.5. IETF LLC, Director of Communications and Operations (was ISOC)

Key responsibilities include:¶

• External promotion outside of IETF, including web search engine ad words, social media posts, and listing on external event calendars such as https://www.ripe.net/participate/meetings/calendar and https://nsrc.org/calendar/.¶
• Outreach to local universities¶
• Provide photographer, including optional team photos and candid photos of collaborating during in-person events¶
• Laptop stickers (Section 3.2.1.4) at in-person events¶

7.6. Judges

The first several Hackathon involved judges who listened to summary presentations by teams at the closing of each Hackathon and identified winning teams for an arbitrary number of project categories. Prizes were made available to members of winning teams. This was done as an incentive to participate in the Hackathon and present results, and to provide a fun yet informative end to the Hackathon that could be appreciated by the entire IETF community. Judging and awarding of prizes led to confusion regarding the nature of the Hackathon, making it appear to some overly competitive. Procurement of appropriate prizes was financially and logistically challenging. Arrangement of judges, determination of winners, and awarding of prizes all became more time consuming, especially as the number of projects and participants grew. Ultimately, it was deemed best to eliminate judging, awards, and prizes entirely. Apparently the IETF community has an innate incentive to participate and present results in the Hackathon.¶

9.1. Privacy Considerations

Participant names and email addresses are displayed publicly in the Participant List (Section 5.3.1). Participants may opt-in or opt-out of the display of their email address as part of their registration.¶

The email addresses of individual champions are often shared publicly by the champions on the wiki. This is done voluntarily by individual champions to make it easier for others to contact them.¶