-
A Hackshop is a combination of ‘Workshop’ and ‘Hackday’. I think I may have invented them, but am happy to be corrected.
-
The problem that Hackshops aim to address is the gap between existing health tech standards and technologies and their use and adoption. Often these technologies are hard to learn about as a developer, because of obscure documentation, a lack of community and associated community resources (eg StackOverflow, support forums), and complex legacy standards. So a Hackshop takes a single technology and teaches a new dev how to make their first few steps with it. An example could be ‘Interacting with a FHIR Server with REST’ or ‘Building a clinical UI with the Ripple Pulsetile framework’
-
It should be a short (eg 1hr), focused (think: a single skill) workshop aimed at getting a developer over the initial ‘hump of difficulty’ with learning a new health IT technology or standard.
-
They are practical and hands-on with minimal theoretical learning required and minimal or no ‘slideware’.
-
The developer should be able to go away being able to DO a new thing that they hadn’t been able to do before. Of course, there’s much more they would subsequently need to learn later, if they decide to use the technology, but they will have the advantage of that initial familiarity with how to get started.