Yesterday at FOSDEM, I had a chat with Pierre-Alexandre Louyot from http://www.epitech.eu/, a network of computer science schools with presence in seleval French cities including Lyon. They have students that participated in previous GSoC editions. in our initial conversation we mentioned some possible ideas:

• Give a talk about Wikimedia tech via teleconference to be broadcasted in all their centres (English is fine and apparently even preferred).
• Discuss about how to promote GSoC and FOSS OPW participation in their centers.
• Connect with their center in Lyon to organize activities in relation to Wikimedia-Hackathon-2015
• Provide more contacts to promote the hackathon among technical communities in Lyon.

I just sent a call for volunteers pointing to this task in wikitech-l, mediawiki-l, wikimedia-l, and wmfall.

Contact established with Mathieu Champely, head of Epitech Lyon.

I really start to miss someone from the hackathon organization acting as local contact in Lyon...

Hello Quim, I can try and find a local contact from the local group in Lyon. Could you please explain what you would exactly expect from that person?

Thanks @Sylvain_WMFr. We need someone able to invite local developer groups to the Hackathon, explaining the event to them and reporting back about the types of sessions these developers expect or would like to have. For instance, someone that could continue the conversation with Epitech Lyon.

In T88274#1007954, @Qgil wrote:

• Give a talk about Wikimedia tech via teleconference to be broadcasted in all their centres (English is fine and apparently even preferred).
• Discuss about how to promote GSoC and FOSS OPW participation in their centers.

I'd be happy to help with that and I can offer to do the talk from Epitech Montpellier's premises. I got briefly in touch with them a couple of years ago about lecturing there, but things didn't materialize. The people I was in touch with were a bit flaky. Do you know who's the best person to contact on their end about those 2 ideas?

As for local things in Lyon, I don't have any contacts there, unfortunately.

Quim, I'm working here for the WMFr in Paris but I can be your local dude in Lyon.

I'll go in many schools already to show Hackathon to students in order to have new attendees. Epitech might be one of them (I'll do all of them on 3 or 4 days I think).

In the same time, I'll be in contact with some communities of dev, and especially a feminine community, which might be very interesting both for Hackathon & FOSS Outreach Program for Women.

Is that fine for you?

Though, I'll need more info.

We were thinking of inviting students by explaining:
"You might do the GSoC next year, you might then work on project for Wikimedia, come and have a first overview of what we do"

Do students register and create a project they want to work on or do they pick among a list?

That might attract new coders and give them motivation for the GsoC.

@Gilles, your help in/from Montpellier is appreciated. Please sync with @AlexCella. Hopefully more contributors will want to help from other French locations.

@AlexCella, your questions about GSoC and (Outreachy) will be answered when I complete T921 next week.

I have put @AlexCella in touch with my two contacts in Epitech.

And I just saw this:

In https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikidata-l/2015-February/005466.html, @Tpt says:

I and some other students from the ENS de Lyon have created a query answering tool [ 1 ] based on Wikidata....

Adding http://www.ens-lyon.eu/ to the mix would be great.

We know that Wikidata and Mobile apps will be main areas at the Wikimedia Hackathon. Which groups can we reach out in Lyon / France? Which activities should we plan for them?

These two areas cover very popular topics with established communities: open data, open knowledge, Android, iOS, mobile development... All newcomers are welcome, but when it comes to our outreach efforts, I would focus in these two. Event program, promotion, and travel sponsorship should be well aligned in order to bring many and great new contributors.

GSoC and Outreachy are well underway now, and there were no activities in France that we are aware of.

What about the promotion of the Wikimedia Hackathon?

I thought it was late since registration closed in March...

I think you need to explain me deeply what you want to do here. I don't really get it.

We'll use the Hackathon to promote GSoC?