The event is Random Hacks of Kindness and it will be hosted this December 3rd and 4th.

On the first day, Montreal participants will be presented real-life problems by representatives of Médecins Sans Frontières and the LIRNEasia think tank. Once a problem chosen, your team will then have two days to create a solution.

In this feat you will not be alone. Thousands of people world wide will be participating in 30 sister events along with you. Participants in other cities will work on solutions to the problems of their community or their organization.

Here in Montreal, I (Dimitry Zolotaryov) am looking for team-mates to represent Montreal-Python. Developers, designers, engineers and social media people are all welcome. Send me a message if you’re interested in being part of an enthusiastic team: dimitry@webit.ca.

This is your chance to hack for good. Won’t you accept the challenge?

Register Here: http://mtlrhok.eventbrite.com/?srnk=1
Event Page: http://www.rhok.org/event/montr%C3%A9al-canada

Past Problems: http://www.rhok.org/problems

Montréal-Ouvert has already been planing on hacking on Saturday November 19th.
Now that it has become exciting with real data, we want to make sure that there’s going to be a lot of Python code written there.

We don’t know yet where the hackothon will take place, but we trust that it’s going to be near downtown, somewhere within walking distance from a metro station. We will be there, and if you like to write Python code and plan on being there, write you name in the comments below; we’re going to assemble a corrosive Python strike team.

Here’s some ideas for cool projects we could undertake during this one day event:

• A site where people could suggest and vote on what dataset the city should release next. Think of something like Reddit or Ubuntu BrainStorm where someone could say “hey, I’d love to make a Patiner-Montreal clone for ski” or “let’s make homebrewing more fun by indexing the water hardness data by burough.”
• A cross-correlation of the datasets already published; can we use the demographics data to visualize how many firemen there are per resident in all of our burrows? How about policemen per resident? What if we bring an extra dimension, like average revenue per burough?
• An aggregator of existing and upcoming applications: a site where it’s easy to see what everyone is doing with the open data of Montréal and with all sorts of metadata like the GitHub repo and the contribution process. Voting on the best applications would make it event more fun.
• A flexible and intuitive calendar of the festivals and cultural events that makes is easy to browse by date, location and genre.
• An integration of all this new smoking hot data with Open Street Maps. Mapify all the things!

So, we’re going to be there. Who else is in?

There will be beer -of course- and also coffee, food, beanbags, and even a giant TV with a PS3 if you want to take a small fifa break

We expect to be hacking between 11h AM and 8h PM. The location will be announced shortly but we expect an attendance cap between 12 and 20 hackers so don’t forget to RSVP on the wiki.

Our next sprint will be on Django translation on September 22nd, 2010, starting at 18h30. Come and allow us to offer Django to a broader community of developers.

Only one week after that, we’ll host a sprint on the Python packaging system. Come and frantically hack with us to empower Python with the best packaging system out there.

Both sprints will be a Google, 1253 McGill College ave. suite #250.

Attendance is limited to 20 sprinters so don’t forget to RSVP on the wiki.

This sprint was a turning point in our sprint series because we managed to get enough notoriety to convince two sprinter to join us remotely despite a massive six hours timezone difference. Alexis Métaireau and Éric Araujo, both living in France and both Google summer of code students on the Python packaging system, joined us util the end of the sprint, around 7am in their timezone. Their participation was very helpful since they were able to answer many questions regarding the road-map and what was in the pipe for various sub-systems of the packaging eco-system. Since they both the commit privilege in the canonical repository, it was very motivating for everyone in Montréal to see their contributions being merged on the fly.

Congratulations to all the sprinter who resisted the call of the terraces to work on the Python packaging system:

• Éric Araujo (remote from France)
• Nicolas Cadou
• Alex Gal
• Yannick Gingras
• Alexis Métaireau (remote from France)
• George Peristerakis
• Luis Rojas

We will have more sprint in the coming weeks. Stay tuned for the announcements.

The sprint will be at Brasseurs Numériques, 1124 Marie-Anne, suite 11, starting at 6h30 pm and going as long as there are hackers standing.

Bring your own laptop or make an arrangement for pairing on the mailing list beforehand. Attendance is limited to 12 persons so please RSVP on the wiki.

The turn out was a bit low compared with previous sprints but this is easily explained by the many regulars who are traveling abroad during the summer. We were also happy to welcome a few new comers.

We took a moment at the white-board to review what was the state of the Python packaging and to define the aspects on which everyone could be contributing.

Alex and Nicolas worked on improving the test coverage in distutils2, a very good way of getting familiar with the code while diving in right away; I, Yannick, gave them a hand by adding test coverage reports as a command line option to the test runner; George and Pior worked on 2to3 migration fixers and on the related test suite; and Davin improved the Hitchhiker’s Guide to Packaging while Michel helped him by packaging a package of his own while following the guide, making sure that the documentation was clear and obvious.

Thanks to the sprinters:

• Davin Baragiotta
• Pior Bastida
• Nicolas Cadou
• Alex Gal
• Michel Gallant
• Yannick Gingras
• George Peristerakis

I also want to personally thank everyone for taking the time to clean their glasses and plates as they were leaving. It was refreshing not to have to do most of the cleanup myself at 1am.

We’re becoming productive during our sprints. One thing that we overlooked when we started sprinting at Montréal-Python is how important it is to have a coach, that is, someone who knows the project reasonably well and who will answer questions from other sprinters. Theoretically, a bunch of hackers could work together, dive in, pry open, and figured out a project as they go. In practice, that does not work very well for a sprint since you get a bunch of people who are not used to work together and the kind of close communication that you need for pair investigation does not have time to kick in during the relatively short sprint. As people are waiting for the investigators to come up with answers to their questions, their excitement dissipates and they get kicked out of the zone.

Another thing that really helps is to have possible tasks with a wide range of difficulty to allow anyone to get busy. An example of great introductory task, as mentioned earlier, is writing unit-test. This requires that setting up a working test environment and producing a coverage report is straight forward and this is what a someone should keep in mind before launching a sprint on a given project.

As it takes some time to setup and to get focussed, one way to improve productivity is to have longer sprint. Hacking during the week-end, especially during nice summer days, is not very popular but dedicated hackers will show up. A good balance between week-days and weekend sprints is key here. Another way to improve is to nail down as many “boiler plate” tasks as possible before the sprint: creating all the Bitbucket accounts and distributing the necessary privileges, assigning tasks, or even setting up a working tests environment.

We have to thank the Python Software Foundation for supporting the sprint by covering the cost of food and drinks. Fuel (food and drinks), is not a requirement for a sprint since dedicated hackers will show up whether they have to bring their own booze or not, but it’s nice to be able to reward sprinters with a savory meal. They deserve it. The sprint sponsorship program is a great thing, not because there is a financial bottleneck to organizing sprint, but because having a common coordinator for Python sprint will help to share the excitement and the knowledge of what works for sprints and what doesn’t. Hopefully, other user groups will join us and make sprints a core element of their schedule.

The sprint will be at Brasseurs Numériques, 1124 Marie-Anne, suite 11,
starting at 6h30 pm and going as long as there are hackers standing.

Bring your own laptop or make an arrangement for pairing on the mailing list beforehand. Attendance is limited to 12 persons so please RSVP on the wiki.

update: We thank the Python Software Foundation for supporting our sprinting effort by supplying food and drinks. You probably recall that not long ago, the PSF announced that it would start a sprint sponsorship program. Montréal-Python is honored to be the first recipient of the program.

• Davin Baragiotta
• Pior Bartida
• Alexandre Bourget
• Nicolas Cadou
• Yannick Gingras
• George Peristerakis
• Pierre Phaneuf (from Google)

This new effort of translation brings the French translation coverage of the Django 1.2 documentation up to 18%. We estimate that 77% of the French translation has been made by pythonistas of Montréal.

• 11314 lines translated (18%)
• 52731 lines waiting for translation

Of the translated lines,

• 8759 are by Montreal-Python
• 2624 are by the Django-fr team

Their is still a long road ahead but the Montreal-Python team is more and more efficient and we hope to see you at the next sprint.

Thanks a lot to AUF for the food and to Google and especially to Pierre Phaneuf (@pphaneuf) for hosting us during those crazy six hours.