The coding path of dribdat went through a pivot this spring, when the Resources feature announced in the previous update was deemed too limited in the current form. Sometimes we need to take a step back to move two steps forward, right, MacGyver? This release, representing a half-way point in the dribdat roadmap, is dedicated to SHARKS! by architect Jaimie Shorten. No petty shark tank, this is an imposing artwork of "compromising character, appearance, and architectural integrity" as recently documented by CGP Grey (with a hat tip to @moovie)

🦈

Here's what's new in dribdat: in release v0.5.0, we turn our Project model into a Resource using a new setting for Events: "use projects as global toolbox". Anything added here gets listed in the new Instructions area, and recommended to future projects at the same stage. This way you can use the full functionality of a Project to document your suggested tools and datasets.

See this live at https://meta.dribdat.cc/event/1/instruction 

A cool new feature of this release is a new way that progress is evaluated through the stages of a Project in the revamped Post function. Instead of just arbitrarily choosing the stage of your project - which administrators are still able to do in the backend - an automatic check validates the fields of a Project relevant for every stage. Then, users are asked to accept a couple of additional self-evaluation criteria, before the project is promoted to the next level:

This hopefully makes the experience more gratifying - and the data more relevant. This work has stimulated various enhancements, such as an infinite timeline of the updates across all projects, that can now be found in the navigation. Details of how this is configured can be found in PR #251.

Another very exciting aspect of this release is deeper integration with the GitHub API: you will automatically see your commit log in the project's Log after Sync. Of course, this will only include commits that overlap with the official Event schedule. If you use rich content in your commits, it gets properly formatted:

If you would like to see this extended to other SCMs, please comment on PR #246

Usability and a touch of class is brought by reworking of the main event screen and new interface elements around the platform. We are still sticking to the concept of a simple-to-deploy web application, with a "purposefully unpolished" look that encourages participants to focus on their own hacks. The honeycomb now looks a little more honeycomb-y. More importantly, we have started bundling default content such as the Code of Conduct and Creative Commons licensing out of the box.

Of course, we love and support all open source hackathon platforms, no matter what shape their frontends are in. Details of this can be found in PR #243

A whole bunch of bugs and performance-related improvements were done that are documented in #236 and #233. Of particular interest to our event organizers, the API now includes summaries and excerpts of project data. This allows us to make more interesting widgets for embedding in external websites, or improve the search feature. Check out a new project in this area at https://github.com/dribdat/backboard

Last but not least, @gonzalocasas and @loleg are working on a new website and style guide - and did you notice that the GitHub organization has been renamed? We will let you discover all that for yourself: visit dribdat.cc to see upcoming events, and drop us a line with your thoughts.

Be aware of SHARKS! 🦈🦈🦈🦈🦈  They have much personality.