Who it’s for?

We welcome individuals and teams who are exploring and building the projects and infrastructure of the Next Net.

Our hackathons have a diverse attendance that consist of:

• Developers
• Entrepreneurs
• Project owners
• Network architects
• Pragmatic Activists
• Social Entrepreneurs
• Regenerative Economists
• Artists, Designers, Human

How it works

Everyone has the opportunity to learn by doing at our events.

Whether you come with an idea, project, or team – doesn’t matter.

The event will be coordinated in semi-open-space will happen during scheduled as well as emergent sessions, (self)organised in accord with Agile principles.

Experience

The typical Hackathon culture has participants staying up all night, drinking energy drinks and eating junk food in a competitive community driven by external motivators of prizes. A couple people leave as winners, most people leave as losers and everyone leaves exhausted – that’s not our style.

We want to build a more humane internet with greater individual sovereignty and collective intelligence and we want to reflect that intention through our events. Holochain Hackathons are focused on building community through the sharing of information and skills in a cooperative context. We want the process to be centred in building relationships and learning together to create a rich experience for all.. We’ll organise and schedule sessions as and when needed so that we spend more time learning by doing and less time in back to back classes. We feed people healthy foods and have reasonable start and end times so that participants leave the event feeling good.

Cost

This is a non-profit, community run event. Registration fees go towards covering the cost of the venue, food, and materials. We want the event to be accessible to everyone, if finances are a barrier for you, please reach out to us at holochain.melbourne@gmail.com for support.

Who’s Coming

Who’s hosting it? The event is put on by the local Holochain Melbourne community, with support from Australian community managers and members, plus Carolyn and Bear from overseas.

Why the Abbotsford Convent? The location is a beautiful oasis in the middle of Melbourne, a short distance from the centre of the city and accessible by our tram network. It is also close to the vibrant Fitzroy suburb with the best in vegan and vegetarian meals, if that is your thing. The site attracts many artists and musicians, and is set up for weekend events such as weddings.

Inclusion and Diversity

We want the Next Net to be built by a community representative of global diversity.

We welcome all who participate constructively in our community, including but not limited to people of varied age, culture, ethnicity, gender, gender-identity, language, race, sexual orientation, geographical location and religious views. We welcome you.

Participation Guidelines

Be respectful and value each other’s ideas, styles and viewpoints

Be direct but professional; we cannot withhold hard truths

Be inclusive and help new perspectives be heard

Appreciate and accommodate our many cultural practices, attitudes and beliefs

Be open to learning from others

Lead by example and match your actions with your words

The following will not be tolerated at the event: violence and threats of violence; personal attacks; derogatory language; unwelcome sexual attention or physical contact; disruptive behaviour; influencing unacceptable behaviour.

Schedule

Friday

18:00 – 18:30 Welcome and Context

18:30 – 20:00 Breakouts on Introduction to Holochain Q&A, Holochain Installation, Coding Deep Dive, etc.

20:00 – 20:30 Initial project brainstorm and team seeding

Saturday

09:30 — 10:00 Breakfast, Coffee, Informal scrum

10:00 — 11:00 Opening session, Project formation, Session offers/requests/scheduling

11:00 — 13:00 Hacking w/ support, and Emergent Sessions

13:00 — 14:00 Lunch

14:00 — 18:30 Afternoon sessions & activities

18:30 — 19:00 End of day meeting and check-in

19:30 — 21:00 Night-hacking (optional)

Sunday

09:30 — 10:00 Breakfast

10:00 — 10:30 Check-ins, Consultations

10:30 — 13:00 Hacking w/ support, Final sessions

13:00 — 14:00 Lunch

14:00 — 16:00 Project presentations, Closing session

What it looks like, a story

Vira comes with a team and a project they’re already working on. Danilo comes because he’s curious about how this stuff works. Vira, Danilo and everyone in between are welcome to come and have the opportunity to dive into making things with support from a fantastic team and community.

During our project brainstorm and team-formation process on Friday evening and Saturday morning, Vira’s team has the opportunity to scope their project and invite others to support them.

Danilo will be able to share some ideas he has, discuss others’ possible projects, join a team’s project that can utilise the skills he already has (we don’t just need developers), and give him the opportunity to learn new skills. Danilo might find himself in a couple different groups. In one he’s learning to code by helping to build a simple game and in another he’s contributing his design skills to create a UI for resource sharing app.

Vira’s team will split up Saturday morning: one of Vira’s teammates will attend a support session to install Holochain locally, another teammate more experienced in Holochain will join a tech-deep dive session to explore the latest developments in core, while Vira has a conversation about their business model and the projects’ architecture.