3 Events Overview
Here we have a rough overview of the projected timeline for running a set of events. One set of events consists of a Community Call paired with 1-2 hands-on mini-hackathons or mini-translathons.
See the relevant chapter for specific details for organizing a specific event type.
3.1 Timeline
| Chapter | Task | Platform |
|---|---|---|
| 4 | Contact potential panelists and moderators for Community Call | Email etc. |
| 4 | Choose date for Community call with participants’ input | |
| 4 | Advertise Community call | Website / Social Media |
| 5/6 | Choose date(s) for mini-translathon/hackathon | |
| 5/6 | Open call for mentors/maintainers at hands-on events | Blog / Registration |
| 5/6 | Advertise Mini-translathon(s)/hackathon(s) | Website / Social Media |
| 5/6 | Open call for participants at hands-on event(s) | Blog / Registration |
| 4 | Run Community Call | Zoom / Docs |
| 5/6 | Run mini-translathon(s)/hackathon(s) | Zoom / Docs |
| 5/6 | Evaluate participant feedback |
3.2 Summary Comparison
| Aspect | Mini-Hackathon | Translathon |
|---|---|---|
| Main Goal | Help participants make their first contributions to FOSS projects, usually through coding or documentation. | Help participants make their first contributions to translations/localizations of FOSS documentation or websites. |
| Format | 2-hour live online coworking session combining hackathon + rOpenSci coworking. | 2-hour live online coworking session combining translation + rOpenSci coworking. |
| Expected Participant Role | Contribute code or small documentation fixes to issues prepared by maintainers. | Review translated texts prepared as pull requests. |
| Preparation by Staff | Collect issues from maintainers, label them, and organize in GitHub Project Board. | Create and label translation PRs, organize them in GitHub Project Board. |
| Support Roles | Maintainers (support contributions to their package) and Mentors (help participants with general contribution workflows). | Editors (review and maintain quality of translations) and Mentors (guide newcomers through the translation process/tools). |
| Contribution Type | Coding tasks (tests, bug fixes, dependencies, deprecations, best practices, CI, etc.) and documentation tasks. | Translation tasks (documentation sections, tutorials, website pages, UI strings, blog post, books). |
| Breakout Rooms | Coding support (GitHub, collaboration workflows), maintainer/package-specific, quiet. | Translation process/tools, language-specific (e.g., Portuguese, Spanish), review, quiet. |
| Slack Channel | Dedicated mini-hackathon channel for continued discussion and follow-up. | Dedicated multilingual channel for ongoing translation and editing work. |
| Honorarium | Offered to maintainers and mentors for time spent preparing and guiding participants. | Offered to editors and mentors for preparation, guidance, and quality review. |
| Pilot Example | 2025 events with global coverage (Europe and Australia time zones). | 2024 event in Portuguese alongside LatinR, focusing on documentation translation (participants from Latin America and African countries). |