Shipwrecked
It's been a month since Shipwrecked, the summer hackathon by Hack Club, and I've finally been able to write this.
If you're not aware, Hack Club is an organization with tens of thousands of teens from across the world that runs events like these (hackathons, workshops, AMAs, events, and so much more) with a bunch of people coming together to make all sorts of great stuff. Right now, the last part of Summer of Making (in collaboration with Github) is going on right now, with some pretty awesome prizes in the shop.
Alright - back to Shipwrecked. Shipwrecked was an in-person 4-day 100-person hackathon hosted on Cathleen Stone Island in the Boston Harbor. To get to Shipwrecked, you first had to make 4 projects, get them reviewed, and hit some engagement thresholds (which were later dropped). That added up to a little over 60 hours minimum (before travel stipends), which was fairly easy to do over 3 months, but knowing me, I did end up doing about half of it in the last 2 weeks. For a few days, I had to essentially work on my project the entire day to finish what I started.
It honestly felt quite unreal finally getting approved to go. I'd actually planned on not going, so the flight to Boston honestly felt somewhat euphoric - like, I'm going to actually stay out here on a private island for a weekend?
I could, in detail, list everything that happened. Others have probably done so quite well. I'll just discuss a few of my personal favorite highlights.
First - the people. There were way too many interesting people for me to list them all out (join the Hack Club Slack!), but I'll name a few.
People
- Nihaal, suffering from Apple addiction,
- Chi, verifiably super duper and now organizer of Daydream Missouri,
- Trulle, absolutely too modest (thanks for the Swedish candy),
- Dara, whose music is amazing (wish we could've made that video day 1),
- Daevaraj, quite knowledgeable about selfhosting, leaving me with much to learn
- Jeremy, never one to let down a highly detailed explanation,
- Parneel, always locked in, no matter what,
- Adrian, bringer of cat ears and lover of XML (who also wrote about Shipwrecked here)
- Nova, in a superposition of tiredness and locked-in
- ...and so many more!
Every single person there was so unique and so genuinely interesting, with their own niche and interest, that you could probably learn something new from any person you'd come across. Send me a DM on Slack if I forgot to include you!
Shipwrecked itself was set up in a way that encouraged sort of informal communications. The island had a set of dorms, each of which had its own communal lounge. And late into the night, perhaps throughout the entire night, you'd find people there working, chatting, and just having a great time. And as we were all quite enamored with tech-related things, it felt much more cohesive and real than I'd ever seen elsewhere.
Now, mini events - and were there a ton. Every day, experienced members and staff would lead workshops, ranging from running a nonprofit (by Zach, the founder of Hack Club), to writing shader graphics (by Chris, who you might know from Sinerider). One of my favorite small events was the Lightning Talks, a collection of impromptu (or prepared?) talks, from technical one like Carlos's HTTP Fingerprinting, to Fox's C++ semi-rant talk, to the absolutely enthralling Hot To Go improv, all for a terrible pun, by Bear. To break the monotony of some of the longer periods of hacking, we had a few more interactive, pure fun things. For example - a mock Hot Ones, where we did the entire Hot Ones challenge, or where we competed to build a tower to win plushies.
The actual hacking? Each day, we were given a new prompt, to be displayed at the daily showcase, where our projects would be shared and tested by all the fellow islanders. They were fairly broad, allowing a wide variety of projects. If you participated in the online portion of Shipwrecked, you can take a look here: https://shipwrecked.hackclub.com/gallery. Some notable projects: a terminal-based paint app, 3-player snake (but with LEDs), and a whole host of thinly veiled gambling (of shells, of course).
In retrospect, Shipwrecked was one of the best experiences I could've had, and is absolutely representative of what Hack Club has been to me (and what it could be for you as well).
If you'd like to participate in the last bit of Hack Club and Github's current virtual make-anything event, Summer of Making (which ends on the 30th), join here: https://summer.hackclub.com/. If you'd like to join Hack Club's winter event, Shiba, which lets you fly to Japan to participate in an arcade game jam, you can join here: https://shiba.hackclub.com/.
You can find me @sadeshmukh on the Hack Club Slack - make sure to drop by and say hello!
P.S. - the picture above is from my short time in Boston itself. Boston has such an amazing vibe, and I would totally visit again.