[Grants] Grant request: Securing HealthHack's Digital Future

[Jonathan Woithe]

On Wed, Jun 20, 2018 at 05:51:28PM +1000, HealthHack Australia wrote:
> Securing HealthHack's Digital Future

I must admit that I hadn't heard of HealthHack until now.  It sounds like an
interesting and worthwhile project.

> HealthHack is free to attend and we welcome everyone to participate,
> especially those who genuinely want to use technology to help improve
> health and medical research outcomes. We???re strictly not-for-profit,
> volunteer-run and 100% open source. All solutions are shared openly and
> freely (as in speech AND beer). We ensure all code is released under an OSI
> approved licence after each hack. More information about who we are and
> what we do is available at healthhack.com.au.

The projects are certainly diverse.  The "health hack stories" include a
number of "what has happened since the event" sections which predictably
reflect the often embrionic nature of the development immediately after the
events.  Can you provide any guide as to how many of the HealthHack
developments over the five years of your existence have gone into production
use or have been the catalyst for others which have?

> We would also like to become an official sub-committee of LA which would
> give us the level of control over our bookkeeping we require.

It probably goes without saying, but this is a separate issue to that of
grant funding.  That is, either or both could happen independently AFAIK,
with the merits of each being evaluated separately.

> HealthHack has been around in various forms since 2013 and we have a fairly
> large and diverse alumni scattered around Australia, however there are four
> of us who have been involved with HealthHack for several years and oversee
> the long-lived aspects of the group as a whole.

It seems from the application that there has been a fairly significant
rotation of personnel over the years, with a relatively small core of people
providing continuity.  Is this an accurate picture, or have I misread the
situation?  Does the majority of work within HealthHack fall to the core
team, or do you receive significant assistance from others directly involved
in the specific events around the country?

Is it fair to conclude that the motivation behind the grant request is to
fund infrastructure which is better suited to your organisational
requirements compared to what you have been using in the past?  How would
the awarding of the grant to fund the suggested services improve the ability
of HealthHack to deliver their future events?

Regards
  jonathan