The hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) is important for both its relevance to current industrial electrochemical processes and its potential future use in a renewable energy economy. Recently an electrochemical treatment was reported that modifies a nickel surface to create an electrode that is highly active toward the alkaline HER. The treatment was hypothesized to cause a platinum-like oxidization of the nickel surface creating a Ni(OH)(x) structure. Herein the method used to optimize the parameters of the treatment for the resulting electrode's HER activity is presented. The dependence of the activity of the treated electrode surface is very sensitive to the parameters: each parameter has a narrow range from which a highly active alkaline HER electrode will result, and the transitions between these ranges are sharp. This offers insights into the mechanism of the treatment. Electrodes treated with optimal and non-optimum parameters are analyzed electrochemically. The optimally treated electrode is shown to maintain high alkaline HER activity over the course of long polarizations in severe conditions (high current density, high concentration, and in a two electrode cell). (C) 2016 The Electrochemical Society. All rights reserved.