DotNetNuke Hackathon at CDUG

In May, Nik Kalyani traveled to the Orlando DotNetNuke User Group to present the first DotNetNuke Hackathon event.  The Orlando Hackathon was very well attended and focused on teaching developers about the new MVP design pattern and the WebformsMVP framework that was included in DotNetNuke 5.3.

What is a Hackathon?

A Hackathon is a developer event that occurs over a short period of time.  Hackathons are informal events aimed at teaching developers some new technology which the developers then use in the development of a new project.  Because of the immersive nature of the events, developers are able to get a good jumpstart on using some new technology or development technique.  These events are designed to encourage participation by people who may not be familiar with a particular technology or concept.

DotNetNuke Hackathon Events are:

• built around a single programming concept (for example: Visual DotNetNuke)
• encourage participation locally (at event site) and remotely
• broadcast online
• provide materials and dev environment setup guidelines ahead of time
• allow anybody to participate
• are peer-judged by the Hackathon participants
• have one or more winners who earn the title "Hackmaster"
• have great prizes for winners and runners up
• require all submissions to be Open Source with MIT license
• require all submissions to be hosted in the DotNetNuke Forge

DotNetNuke Hackathons

Building on the success of the first event, DotNetNuke Corp, HyperCrunch and the DotNetNuke Community Forge team have committed to four more DotNetNuke Hackathons in 2010.  Using the lessons learned from the Orlando event, we will be extending the timeframe for each event, and working to increase online access and participation.  We will also be working to improve the promotion of each event and the local DotNetNuke User Group hosts with the goal of improving attendance at local user groups.

Next week I’ll be heading to Washington DC for the second event in the DotNetNuke Hackathon series.  The Capital DotNetNuke User Group will be hosting the “Visual DotNetNuke” Hackathon.  The Visual DotNetNuke Hackathon will provide developers with the knowledge and tools to create great looking DotNetNuke modules that are more inline with contemporary design trends.  In keeping with the “Visual DotNetNuke” theme, I’ll be presenting on using SilverLight with DotNetNuke to create great looking modules.  There will also be presentations by Nik Kalyani and Antonio Chagoury on using Telerik ASP.Net AJAX controls and jQuery to develop modules with more contemporary UI designs.