hackathon?

[bbolker]

Floating the idea of a glmmTMB hackathon sometime this year (maybe in the spring/summertime)? I've been chipping away at things but there's still quite a bit of low-hanging fruit and it would be fun/interesting to try to regain some momentum.

• The very easy way to do this would be remotely via Zoom/Discord/etc.
• if people were feeling ambitious and could get travel money, we could almost certainly get support for a focused research group at the Banff International Research Station (up to 8 participants; there's a 4-month lead time).

[mebrooks]

Yes, I agree it would be nice to focus on this for a few days or a week. If many developers are planning to attend ISEC (15-19 July 2024 Swansea, UK) maybe we could plan something before or after that, nearby. I'd also be happy to come to Banff, but need to find travel money. Somewhere, I have notes on some funding options, but I'll have to dig them out.

[DrJerryTAO]

I am interested in this.

[bbolker]

I'm seriously considering ISEC, and would be happy to stay a day or so afterward to hack. (I won't be available before.) Perhaps we could poll developers/other interested people? Could we contact the ISEC organizers and see if we might be able to borrow some working space for a couple of days? (We could make the hackathon hybrid if there were some people who wanted to participate but not schlep to Swansea ...)

[mebrooks]

Just an idea... if we had one hackathon in Denmark, maybe we could involve @gavinsimpson and tackle some GAMM plotting methods .

[gavinsimpson]

I'm 95% sure that I'll be in Swansea for ISEC, but will have to leave right away after the conference, unfortunately.

As for Denmark, I'd be happy to host something in Aarhus, although my availability would depend on the exact timing.

[bbolker]

Time to think about this some more.

• I will be at ISEC but not available beforehand.
• I'm happy to come to Copenhagen or Aarhus for a day after ISEC if that works well for people.
• While we'd like to have the largest possible core group in person, I'm sure we could work out some hybrid options too.

I started a Google sheet here to find out who wants to/can participate.

Once we know where/when we want to do this we need to find a venue (we probably just need a room for a day), unless we have to fall back to a virtual-only event (in which case our time constraints get much looser)

[mebrooks]

I can't find any funding to host a meeting at the moment. Of course, I'm sure we can use space at DTU. A meeting starting July 22 in Copenhagen seems like it might be possible.

I noticed that ISEC ends at 13:00 on Friday the 19th of July, so maybe we could do a half-day meeting there. The registration system seems to still be offering dorm rooms that evening. This is assuming that people haven't already booked their flights.