Local Hack Day (or LHD for short) started in 2014 with the goal of serving as a gentle introduction to your local hackathon community. We worked with hundreds of organizers to run simultaneous hackathons in-person all over the globe. Since then, LHD has expanded from a once a year affair to three events (Learn, Build, and Share). With all hackathons going digital in 2020, we changed LHD again into week long hackathons for both our newest and most experienced hackers. Throughout all that change the LHD community has always been one of the most involved and passionate groups within the hacker community. 

Although hackers who joined us at LHD Build got a preview, we are excited to announce Local Hack Day’s next evolution to the community, Global Hack Week. We are changing Local Hack Day to Global Hack Week and running two additional events a year, which means you’ll be invited to six Global Hack Weeks during 2022.

Local Hack Day is now Global Hak Week

Why Global Hack Week? 

As Local Hack Day has grown, particularly throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, it is no longer local or limited to one day. Today, LHD is a week-long event featuring technical live streams, workshops, career chats, panels, games, and more. This event is so much more than one day that we wanted to update our language to reflect how this event series has brought together hackers from every corner of the globe for weeks at a time.

At our most recent Local Hack Day, Build 2022, we hacked for eight days straight with friends from over 60 countries across the planet. While we still encourage hackers to work with folks in their local communities, we felt the event as a whole was more “global” than “local”.

We’re incredibly proud of this community and are excited to have a name that reflects it more accurately.

Countries represented at LHD: Build 2022

What else? 

You asked for more and we’re delivering. We are running six Global Hack Weeks during 2022. These additional events ensure we can keep up with the demand from our community. Oh, and you can even sign up for each of them already!

A look back at the history of Local Hack Day

Hackers at Local Hack Day December 2014. Should we bring those beanies back as GHW Swag?

With this big change, it’s worth a look back on the path that brought us here. 

From 2014 through Fall 2020 Local Hack Day consisted of a 12 hour mini-hackathon that took place in person on school campuses around the world on a singular day. 

Students at Bronx High School of Science participate in cup stacking

On the very first LHD, December 6th of 2014, 1,200 students from 35 different schools met in person for workshops, the chance to meet new hackers, and of course, the opportunity to earn some cool swag. You can still check out this workshop on How to Be a Badass Hacker from MLH CEO and Co-Founder, Swift. 

 

In October 2015 Local Hack Day grew to 88 events across 14 countries and MLHers traveled over 150 miles in the span of one day to visit hackers at 6 different events. They arrived with snacks, board games, and swag in hand to meet hackers, organizers, and volunteers in the tri-state New York area. Check out their full tour here. 

 

Hackers tune into LHD hear MLH Co-Founder Jon present at opening ceremonies, broadcasted live from MLH HQ in New York City.

2016 and 2017 were huge successes, and we grew to over 250 worldwide events in 2017. Once again, MLHers raced across the northeastern US making sure hackers were well-fed and having fun. 

In 2018 we made the announcement that instead of only one Local Hack Day, we would run Local Hack Day: Learn, Build, and Share. Each of these three events would focus on a different aspect of a hacker’s journey – learning new skills with workshops, building and shipping awesome projects, and sharing and demoing your work. And of course, we couldn’t leave out one of the most exciting parts of Local Hack Day 2018 – we reached the goal of having a Local Hack Day on each continent, including Antarctica (hello, penguins!) 


At Local Hack Day: Build in 2019, we saw a record-breaking number of new attendees joining. We already know that this event was perfect for first-time hackers and our findings that 93% were first timers really solidified this.

 

What better way to take a break from hacking than a good old fashioned paper airplane contest?

When Local Hack Day: Share rolled around in Spring 2020, we pivoted to a digital format in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. This time was incredibly scary and we saw our community lean on one another for support in the midst of so much uncertainty. Shifting our Spring 2020 event was a scramble but we had more time to prepare for LHD: Build in Fall 2020, which led us to brainstorm how we could introduce more elements to keep this event fresh in the digital age. One change was introducing guilds to help the event feel more tight-knit. Guilds started as your smaller community within Local Hack Day, and they are here to stay for Global Hack Week. A guild can be formed of folks from your school, people with the same technical interests as you, or even technologists from the same timezone as you (shoutout to ESTechies!) We also decided to extend Local Hack Day to a full week of programming, a change our community welcomed with open arms. 

 

To our delight, that Fall 2020 event thrived online and we knew we needed to keep raising the bar on what Local Hack Day could be. We geared up for Local Hack Day: Build in January 2021 waiting in anticipation to see what our community would create. Once again, we were blown away by the numbers at this event – we shared over 15,000 Discord messages shared, 6,000 projects built, and 2,000 social media posts shared. 

 

Hackers take to social media to share what they’re doing at LHD: Build 2021

In 2021 we added one additional Local Hack Day-style event, MLH INIT (now known as Global Hack Week: INIT). This week served as a celebration of the 2021 season and the start of the 2022 season. We init-iated the season with another week of panel discussions, technical live streams, and most importantly, a ton of fun.

 

Former student Hackers discuss how their experiences in the MLH community translate to their full-time careers.

And finally, we cannot forget about our final two Local Hack Day events, LHD: Learn 2022 and LHD: Share 2022. Both of these yet again raised the bar for what our community can accomplish. We had 61 countries represented, thousands of hackers participating, and two weeks that reminded us why we love this community so much.

And that brings us to today! We are beyond excited to spend two additional weeks with you this year. The community is what makes Global Hack Week special and the reason we want to continuously improve it. We’ll see you at Global Hack Week: Share, coming up in just under 2 months, April 3 – 11.

 

Hackers take a break from writing code to hack their coffee-making process.

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