In February of 2014 I found myself attending the first ever Hackcon. Just previously I’d gone to my first collegiate hackathon at MIT the October prior and knew immediately I wanted to kickstart a hacker community at my own University. Hackcon was the perfect place to learn from the leaders of the Hackathon organizing community.
Listening to the speakers, I learned about the challenges facing large hackathon organizers (namely, space limitations) : they were already starting to feel the pressure of having to start to turn away hackers that wanted to attend their events. I also discovered that it was intimidating for smaller events to get started—it’s tough to find a day that didn’t already conflict with another great event.
As a direct response these two problems, MLH is excited to announce the first ever Local Hack Day, happening December 6th. Instead of one giant event, Local Hack Day involves multiple schools across the globe, each concurrently hosting its own twelve hour Hack Day. All universities and high schools are encouraged to host their own Hack Day starting at 9am local time. Thousands of students will participate in this day of building, learning and celebrating all the local hacker communities around the world.
To keep all the Hack Days connected, MLH will be livestreaming the entirety of Local Hack Day. We’ll be featuring all participating hacker clubs on MLH TV, so be ready for our call—when we find out what you’re currently building, we’ll stream it live to the entire community.
Excited? Head on over to the Local Hack Day website to find an event near you. If an event isn’t nearby checkout out the guidelines and information about hosting a Hack Day at your own school. All you need to host a Hack Day is a space to hack, a projector for MLH TV and a small group of fellow hackers. If your school doesn’t have an existing hacker community, this is the opportunity to get one started; we want to enable you to create the first hacker event at your school.