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Kickstart 2018 Retrospective

Future kickstart Discussion

  • Mini games. Run a smaller competition at kickstart, with interuption from calendar

Organisation of the day

  • Talks were far too short, had an hour to fill
  • Rehersal for presentations
  • Schedue wasn't stuck to especially well
  • Radios are useful for instant communication, or announcements
  • Make sure teams know where events were happening
  • Have a single person responsible for organising events on the day
  • Micro games were disjointed, stolen from SR very late in the game
  • Micro games were done too quickly, very bad quality
  • Micro games docs should have a history / latest version (google drive / git)
  • Lots of people dont have access to drive
  • Sharing persistant information to new people is an issue
  • Communication with people greeting teams was an issue, they didnt know when it all started
  • Contingency plans are a good idea, eg for underrunning talks
  • Tours are good for student intake
  • reherse the competition
    • post-competition

Project Management and Ownership

  • Trello isnt good for showing priority cards
  • Referencing other tickets (for dependency) in Trello isnt really possible
  • Code ownership is missing
  • Have a list of what kind of thing should go on what platform
  • Issues with people not having access to the right information, left behind, unused resources
  • New starters should be told where things are
  • Clearer ownership of major areas
  • Trello isnt really working, not sure what the best solution is, or what it would look like
  • Trac is a bit shit, but might work?
  • Action (Tyler): Research into possible solutions, and how to use it. To review in Jan

Collaboration

  • Coordinator per task, not an owner. Supervise task running
  • Maybe seperate hardware and software, theyre different
  • Using a single tool for things isnt ideal, play to specialities
  • Seperation of kit development and usage
  • Owning sections

    • Kit (manufacturing, design, software) (producer not director)
    • Events (kickstart, comp, tech days)
    • Public facing side
    • Teams (bundle with above?)
  • Action (Peter): Create document specifying roles for tasks, who does what

Kit Issues

  • Kit setup isnt very mature
  • Should be resolved in time
  • Avoiding scope creep is good
  • Prioritisation isnt the best, but we've only built things when we need them
  • Coping with failure isnt great
  • Kit development isnt very good without an actual kit
  • No 1 person has been thinking about the kit as a whole
  • Some kind of technical lead for checking compatability / overview
  • Best way to test a full system is test a full system!
  • Money is easy to get, volunteer time is not

Contracts can be copyrighted

Clarity what our liabilities are regarding kit