MLH UK has come a long way since we started in October 2014. After a fantastic Fall season, and Manchester taking home the trophy, we’ve almost doubled the number of hackathons for Spring. With our transition to MLH EU, 2015 has already seen new cities such as Paris, Barcelona and Leuven appearing on the schedule, making it easier than ever for EU hackers to attend an event. As part of our commitment to making hackathons more accessible, we will be improving our bus and coach programme; more buses, to more cities, bringing more hackers together with fully paid travel.
We’re already hard at work lining up coaches for events in the EU Spring 2015 season. Unfortunately, due to some external constraints we weren’t able to do this for ICHack or HackLondon. We still wanted to encourage hackers to attend those events, so we offered up to £40 reimbursement for hackers providing receipts for their travel. We’ll be able to offer the coach programme instead of travel reimbursements to all other events in the season.
From the moment registrations for a hackathon open, we watch for groups of students that could be served by a coach or bus. However, if you feel we have missed you or your group of students off from the coach route, or want to recommend a pick up location for us, please do not hesitate to reach out by email or Twitter. Likewise if you are struggling to find a group to travel with, please let us know, as we may be able to accommodate or help you find travel companions. By running coaches through multiple cities, we are able to serve small groups of hackers; for example, the STACSHack coach was able to pick up just 4 students from Stirling, as Stirling is between two major cities, Glasgow and Edinburgh.
We are heavily committed to improving the accessibility of hackathons, and will continue to find new solutions to the problem of reaching hackathons. If you have any ideas, drop us a message!