Melbourne Working Bee April 2013

We are holding a Working bee in Melbourne on April 13th, 2013.

This working bee has been postponed until further notice. We just didn't have enough lead time to get it organised. If you're interested, please let us know, and tell us what dates would suit you!

When
Saturday April 13th, 2013. TBD.

Working bee: 10am-7pm; feel free to drop in any time.

Dinner: 7pm until around 9pm. Feel free to meet us at the working bee around 6pm for a show-and-tell of what we've done.

Where
The boardroom at Causeway House.

Level 3, 306 Little Collins St Melbourne VIC 3000

Facilities

 * large table that seats about 20 people
 * breakout/lounge area
 * balcony space
 * projector and screen
 * kitchen facilities (coffee provided!)

Public transport
Close to Flinders St station, and to Collins St, Bourke St, Swanston St and Elizabeth St trams.

Parking
It's the CBD, so... there's probably paid parking all around, but not much free parking.

Accessibility
Access to the 3rd floor is by elevator, with no steps between the street and the working bee venue.

The toilets have been described as "spacious" but are not officially accessible.

Please let us know if there's anything else in particular you want us to look into.

Childcare/children's activities
We are not able to provide childcare/children's activities, but you are welcome to bring your kids if they are old enough to amuse themselves or young enough not to care.

There is a quiet/private space available for feeding and changing babies.

Who
Anyone interested in Growstuff who wants to help us build and improve it! This includes:


 * gardeners/customers/people who use or would like to use the site
 * coders (Ruby, Rails, Javascript)
 * devops folks (Travis CI, heroku, etc)
 * designers (graphics, UI, frontend web stuff)
 * communicators (tech writers, bloggers, etc)
 * database people/data specialists/domain experts (eg. horticultural information)
 * people with agile, pairing, and test driven design experience/interest
 * organisers/planners/project managers
 * really, anyone who's interested!

Snacks and drinks
Tea and coffee provided. Bring anything else you like.

Lunch
Bring some food to share and/or we'll supplement by ordering pizza. (Growstuff will foot the pizza bill.)

Dinner
We'll be going out together somewhere in the city that is cheap and cheerful and can handle a group. We're thinking of Shanghai Dumplings in Tattersall's Lane. This will be a pay-for-your-own-dinner situation: we anticipate $10-$15 per head, max. Cash only, no split bills, so please make sure you have suitable cash on you.

Vegetarians and other food restrictions
Vegos, we've got you covered. If you have other food restrictions, we may or may not be able to handle them. Drop us a line and we'll see what we can do. Please feel free to bring your own food on the day; there are kitchen facilities available if you need to reheat or whatever.

Advance preparation (for techies)
If you are a coder or would like to code, you might like to work through some of our "getting started" activities so that you're ready to actually code on the day and don't have to spend too much time on setup.

First, make sure you have signed up for accounts on:


 * Github
 * Pivotal Tracker
 * and optionally, this wiki

If you are new to coding/aren't familiar with web development/need a refresher, you might like to check out our Newbie guide

The next step is to go through Development pre-requisites and set up your dev environment. This can take up to three hours if you have a slow machine, so it really is a good idea to at least make a start on it before attending the working bee. However, if you can't get through this stuff, don't sweat it. We can help you on the day. (Or you can ask for help on our Mailing list or IRC channel anytime.)

Non-techie activities
The following is a rough list of things we'd love non-technical people to get involved in during the working bee:


 * acting as "customers" -- if you are a food-grower who uses Growstuff, you are the expert in what you want from it. We want to consult with you and ask you questions about how you think the site should work.  We can team you up with a pair of programmers who will build things you need, while you advise them.
 * extend the crop database -- we are heading towards an improved crops database that includes "hierarchical crops". We'd like to pre-build a spreadsheet of crops we want to include in this when the time comes.  Your job would be to help come up with a list of ALL the crops, and find scientific names and Wikipedia links for them if possible.
 * marketing/PR -- soon, we'll be doing a PR push and contacting lots of online media (eg. blogs) and offline venues (eg. community garden groups) where people talk about food gardening, and asking them to take a look at Growstuff. We need help putting together our database of people/places to contact about this.  If you're interested, and especially if you have contacts/experience in a particular area (eg. school gardens, permaculture) we would appreciate your help with this!
 * blogging/writing -- if you yourself are a blogger or writer and would like to write about Growstuff, that would be fantastic. We can provide you with as much information as you need, and help promote your blog post/article if you want.

If you have other ideas for things you'd like to work on just let us know.

Contact
For more information, contact [mailto:skud@growstuff.org skud@growstuff.org] or tweet at @growstufforg.

Want to host a Growstuff working bee?
If you're interested in hosting a working bee in another city, let Skud know. We will be preparing documentation/materials to help you.