Coworking week 2023 in Bogota

Discussions - Public
#1

I don’t think we already have a dedicated thread for the coworking week in Bogota for 2023, and since 2023 Open edX Conference is already quite long, I’m creating one here. :slight_smile:

@gabriel During a community meeting today Felipe mentioned that he would be happy to welcome us for a day or so at eduNext’s office - which sounds like a great idea! I think you have chatted a bit together about this already, but I promised I would bring it up with you. It looks a bit too small to fit everyone, but maybe we can think of something? Either split in two coworking spaces that day, or alternate morning/afternoon, with a lunch with everyone in the middle? Not sure what’s best, but it’s a good opportunity to get to know their team better.

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#2

@antoviaque that sounds like a cool idea! We should definitely take the opportunity to get to know their team better. I’ll be looking into this over the coming weeks. Thanks for bringing it up!

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#3

Oh yay! I didn’t know eduNEXT were in Bogata! That’s perfect. Would be so great to hang out with them!

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#4

I scheduled a ticket to work on this in a few weeks.

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#5

@antoviaque I’ve been monitoring price predictions in Hopper, and I believe now is the time to start booking our flights to Bogota. Can you confirm that I can go ahead and schedule tickets for team members to do this in the coming sprint?

edit. One tricky aspect is we don’t know yet who goes to Boston at the conference, so I wonder how we’ll manage that. I figure the people who end up going to Boston can modify their flights? We’ll likely lose some money in that process.

#6

@gabriel Thanks! And yes it’s good for me to get started on booking flights to Bogota - and probably the accommodation as well?

Maybe we could hold on booking flights for people who are submitting talks and for whom we aren’t sure? We might pay them a bit more expensively, but that’s still going to be less than losing the flight to Bogota – especially since that would likely make us lose both the way in and the return, as often airlines don’t allow to take the return flight when we don’t take the way in?

#7

Makes total sense, let’s do that.

#8

Update:

As discussed in the conf thread, we’ll spend our coworking week living around and working from Usaquén, which is a somewhat affluent neighborhood located in Northeast Bogotá, right at the feet of the Eastern Hills. This location was recommended to us by the team at eduNEXT as a safe and convenient area to make as our home base. Other sources recommended this area, too. The lively neighborhood of Chapinero is close by, and dining options abound. So Usaquén, although a bit far from the historical center, looked like a safe choice, and a good balance between a quiet (boring?) neighborhood and the hustle & bustle of downtown.

We will be working from Cola+Bora, a nice coworking space located right at the heart of Usaquén. We should all be able to reach the coworking either on foot, by bus, or by Uber (short, cheap ride).

Our friends at eduNEXT, as discussed above, have also offered that we visit their offices in Chapinero for some kind of collaborative workshop. This is a good idea, so I’ll be meeting with them next week to discuss it in more detail, and I’ll update you.

I’ve also built a list of accommodation options, and will schedule tasks next week for people to add their names to bookings, or to find their Airbnbs.

It would be great if some of you could start looking at activities : ) Short ones that we can do on a weeknight, and perhaps a few ideas for daytrips on the weekend?

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#9

Here are some ideas I like… what do people think?

  • Cycling tour in the city
  • Walking tour of the city
  • Coffee tour
  • Hiking day trip (e.g. Chingaza National Park or Guatavita Lagoon)
  • Thermal hot springs day trip (e.g. Termales Los Volcanes)
  • Salsa dancing
  • Club dancing
  • Bar hopping
  • Other ideas?

0 voters

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#10

Thank you Jill : ) We were restricted to two votes, but I’m down with pretty much everything from the list.

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#11

Ach sorry – the default said “0”, which I assumed meant all… I’ve recreated the poll so you can say as many as you want!

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#12

Like I’ve mentioned above, Juan, Felipe, and Angie at eduNEXT would like to organize an in-person, collaborative “hack-a-thon” with OpenCraft, hosted at eduNEXT’s office. This would be a great opportunity to discuss common issues or ideas, and increase our collaboration in the future.

  • Can someone please volunteer to coordinate with eduNEXT, and organize this? Planning this event is probably a few hours, tops. I’d prefer if someone technical could handle it (especially when it comes to choosing topics, etc.). I think all we need is a dedicated thread and a Google Doc.
  • What budget can we use to organize/attend this? @antoviaque @tikr
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#13

Good question. In terms of existing accounts, OpenCraft - Conferences seems fitting, although we might decide to choose a more specific one depending on the topic(s) that will be tackled during the workshop/hack-a-thon.

As for the actual budget/dollar amount to use, that’s a question for @antoviaque :slight_smile:

#14

@gabriel This is great! Though if we spend time on a hackathon, it would have to come from the conference/coworking budget, we can’t really afford new budgets or extensions currently. Unless it’s on a project which is within the scope of core contributor work, in which case it could be part of that existing budget? (It could also help making the outcome of the hackathon useful to the Open edX project.)

#15

Got it, thanks. So far we’re slightly below the target budget, so it looks like we could afford it. But it would indeed make sense to make the outcome of the hackathon useful to the larger community. :+1: