Yesterday was our first Spring Of Code hackathon; around a dozen of us gathered at London Hackspace to discuss what our aims are for the project, start piecing the site together, and generally geek out. Pie was eaten and plans started to become reality.

We were joined by a few interested Hackspace members, activists from the Occupy movement, open source developers and the Visionon.tv team who came along to get involved in the project. We're using Liferay, the online portal and content management system to develop this Spring of Code site. Members of Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Frankfurt were linked in through IRC, ideas were flowing, and we were all starting to get very excited about the potential of this monster that we're about to unleash.

Over the coming weeks, you are all invited (and encouraged!) to build and finalise the interface and functionalities of SpringOfCode.org, giving the site the user friendly navigation and accessibility it needs.

A key thing that came out of our discussions during the hackathon is the importance of usability and accessibility for the site. We want everyone to feel that they can get involved, and we don't want to alienate non-coders with an overly technical and scary looking platform. Inclusivity is at the heart of this project, and we're working hard to reflect this in the look and feel of the site.

For now, mentors and participants are welcome to register for Spring Of Code using the Register page. Once you've registered you can sign in and add your project to the Projects page, or start personalising your profile page. We'll let you know how things are coming along with the rest of the site, and everything will be in place in time for the official launch of Spring Of Code on 29^th February.

Good to have you along for the ride!

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