NixOS ZHF Hackathon & UX Workshop

It's time for a new NixOS release, 23.11 Tapir! 🎉

For a month before release, NixOS is in ZERO Hydra Failures stage. During this time, the community tries to fix all of the Hydra build failures in Nixpkgs. You can read more about the process here.

Who is this event for?
Anyone who's even slightly interested in Nix! Among the attendees you'll find core Nix contributors, full-on Nix beginners, and everything in between. This event is as much about Hydra as it is about engaging with the local Nix and functional programming community. It's a great opportunity to get your feet wet while helping us stabilise the next release.

What's the agenda?
We have a modern, spacious venue at OST Rapperswil all to ourselves for the entire two days. This will be a two-track event - so if you want to take a break from hacking on Nix, you can check out the workshop that'll take place in parallel. We often discuss matters that concern the Nix community as a whole in these workshops!

The tracks are scheduled in a way that everyone can participate in at least some of each. Note that you don't have to spend the entire weekend with us to get something out of this event!

Matrix is our primary communication channel. Join us to hear about updates and other relevant information.

Saturday

• 09:00 Doors open, mingling
• 10:00 Lightning talks:
• 10:00-10:15 (Alex) Introduction, results from last workshop's commitments
• 10:15-10:25 (Valentin) Nix maintenance and documentation
• 10:25-10:35 (Elton) Introduction to the UX workshop
• 10:35-10:45 (Ivan & Auguste) Experiences from Summer of Nix
• 10:45-11:00 (Silvan) Introduction to the ZHF process
• 11:00-11:30 Pitches: Shares what you want to work on - if you wish
• 11:30-19:00 Hacking & snacking
• 13:00-14:00 First UX session
• 16:00-17:00 Second UX session
• 17:00-17:30 "Standup": Summarise what you've done - if you wish
• 18:00 Group photo and Glühwein!

Sunday

• 10:00 Doors open, mingling
• 10:30-11:00 Lightning talks:
• 10:30-10:40 (Ivan) Forming a Nixpkgs Geospatial team
• 10:40-10:50 (Matthias) Funding strategies in open source
• 11:00-15:00 Hacking & snacking
• 11:00-12:00 Third UX session
• 14:30-15:00 Presentation of UX workshop results

Do I need to bring anything?
A laptop would be useful. Food, drinks, coffee, tea, swag, desks, and friendly mentors are all provided - we just need fun company. Bring as many friends as you can! 🙂 Make sure they RSVP, so we know how much food and swag to get.

Sounds great! Are there other such events?
We organise ZHF every 6 months and we organise smaller Nix meetups irregularly. Stay on top of these things by joining the Nix Zürich group or having a look at the swissdevjobs event calendar!

UX Workshop
The program is a mix of training and collaborative development that is run by Elton Vecchietti, UX department lead at Modus Create.

The goals for this track are:

• Bring in everything that we discussed in the two previous workshops
• Work on an information architecture for the Nix ecosystem
• Allow the participants to elaborate the relevance and priority of content in the different points of contact with the ecosystem
• Discuss wireframes and pre-concepts
• Find actionable next steps for concrete improvements

The Nix UX workshop is made possible and sponsored by Tweag.

Hackathon
The main objective of the hackathon is to approach Zero Hydra Failures for the upcoming NixOS release 23.11 by fixing bugs and build errors in Nixpkgs and NixOS.

A hackathon is also a great opportunity to address issues that are otherwise hard to fix or get going with. Therefore everyone can pitch projects they want to work on at the venue, and ask for assistance or schedule time to discuss their ideas or code.