2013-04-27/28 - Microcosm Alpha Hack Weekend

We'll be launching an alpha of Microcosm mid-April.

Features for the alpha are:

• REST API
  
• Basic permissions
  
• Basic types (events, conversations)
  
• MarkDown text for content
  
• Token based authentication
  
• Mozilla Persona for login
  
• Django web app (soon to be open-sourced) for the front-end
  
• Initial draft of the design (focus on typography and content)
  
  
  

The alpha isn't feature complete. There are many more types of content to come (Q&A, wiki, classifieds, galleries, etc) and basic features are missing (attachments, private messaging, etc) as well as advanced features missing (advanced permissions and user groups).

The purpose of the alpha is to:

• Get feedback on the approach we're taking
  
• Get a couple of small forums up and running to provide feedback on how they're used
  
• Provide a solid and maintainable foundation to build everything else
  
• Determine where we should focus our energy going forward (prioritisation of tasks)
  
• See how people use the APIs provided and evolve them based on feedback
  
  
  

With that in mind, we're throwing the doors of our studio open for the weekend of Saturday April 27th through to Sunday April 28th, 9am through 9pm-ish each day.

We'll provide a space for up to 8 people to be resident for the weekend, with us nearby making changes and fixing stuff quickly.

We'll also provide pizzas, drinks, and other snacks to those hacking away, and a safe place to lock bikes.

This will all happen at http://studiothirtynine.com/ unless demand is so great that we need to find a larger venue.

What can you do during the hack weekend? Pretty much what you wish, though we're keen to see people build against the API, so as suggestions:

• An Android app
  
• An iOS app
  
• Front-end theme for the site (ideally predominantly CSS, which means you can help shape our HTML to make theming easier)
  
• Django modules for extensibility of the product
  
  
  

If more than one person wants to work on, say, the Android app... then we'd encourage you to pair up into a team to move faster.

Anyone interested?