Global Events & Hackathon Resources

So you want to organize a community event or hackathon.....Read this first!

The OpenMRS Community has organized more than 15 Implementer Meetings, Virtual Meetings, Town Halls, and Hackathons. Along the way, we've amassed a variety of tools and resources to help with organizing, planning, and conducting these events.

Specific Advice

 Here are some of the things we've learned along the way:

• Share the lift. It helps to have a team organizing an event or hackathon, rather than just one person. Some people are great at organizing and promoting events. Others at identifying & leading technical challenges, practical sessions, or presentations. When we all work together, we can tap into our collective strengths.

• Give some structure, not a lot. We want our meetings to be community-driven. For our Implementers' Meetings, this means we use a semi-unconference format, where conference participants propose & organize sessions on the topics they are most interested in.

• Whether it's a large, in-person community meeting or a virtual "mini-meeting," work open time into the schedule for Lightning Talks, Showcases, or open discussion. For Hackathons, bring technical leads from OpenMRS implementations into discussions about the technical challenges or themes that will be the focus of the hackathon. To lend some structure to the event, proposed sessions can be grouped & scheduled to reflect meeting themes or community strategic priorities.

Want some help? Contact us!

Reach out to @Christine Gichuki, our Global Events Manager, or join our weekly Global Events & Marketing Team call.

Resources

Preparations

• Ops Plan

• Expense Calculator

• OMRS Implementers Meeting Host Country Criteria

• OMRS Implementers Meeting Host Country Application

• OMRS Implementers Meeting Talk Announcements

  • Host Country Applications

  • Host Country Announcements

  • Registration

• Meeting Schedule Template

• Virtual Meeting Zoom Room & Registration

• OpenMRS Events Calendar

• Speaker Guidance

• Strategic Invitation Letter

• Meeting Invite List (MailChimp)

• Virtual Meeting Slide Deck

• Lightning Talk Sign Up & Talk Post

• Showcase Sign Up

OMRS Hackathons

• How to Organize a Hackathon

• Sample Hackathon Talk Posts

  • Hackathon Ideas

  • Lead a Hackathon

  • Hackathon Attendee Information

  • Hackathon Summary/Recap

• Illustrative Hackathon Concept Note

• Illustrative O3 Hackathon Schedule

Useful Community Tools & Conventions

• OpenMRS ID

• Code of Conduct

• Communication Conventions

• Community Jira Board

• OpenMRS Github repos

Learn From Previous Hackathons

Read through the existing Hackathons resources.

Either add your event to one of the existing hackathon wiki pages or create your own page as a subresource of Hackathons using the existing ones as a guide.