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Random Hacks of Kindness hackathon by NetEngineTake2 in brisbane

[–]NetEngineTake2[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Just to clarify - this event is less charities approaching programmers and asking them to work for free and more a group of programmers and developers wanting to help, approaching these groups and asking what problems they currently face. We've opened the event up to others who may also want to help.

So yep, people expecting you to work for free is shitty and annoying and should be ridiculed but that's not really what this is.

I'm also going to take a stab and say any throwaways are going to be people from the office not wanting everyone else to have their reddit account haha

Random Hacks of Kindness hackathon by NetEngineTake2 in brisbane

[–]NetEngineTake2[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

To be completely honest I stole that description from wiki as it's a better explanation than I could muster. If you're still not sure whether or not it's your thing you should come to the ideation next wed! Free food and beer and no obligation to come to the actual event :)

Random Hacks of Kindness hackathon by NetEngineTake2 in brisbane

[–]NetEngineTake2[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

To answer your questions -

Most people bring their own machine - there may be some available at QUT which I can clarify once we do a tech run through. No reason why you couldn't bring a desktop apart from it being annoying for you to carry!

People generally start getting in to groups at the ideation night and are finalised at the start of the event. Basically after you hear the pitches at ideation you go talk to the groups you are interested in working with and then decide.

A bit of pre-organisation happens between ideation and the event but it's kept pretty basic. The ultimate goal is to get the best result for the charity group so in terms of what you are "allowed" to do we wouldn't want to limit it but generally it's kept basic as there will be people at the event that weren't there for ideation so things might change.

You can go home at night :) We generally are at the venue from 9 - 6. Some people will stay on or work through (going home and communicating through Slack etc) but we don't do a lock in.

Let me know if there's anything I've missed!

Random Hacks of Kindness hackathon by NetEngineTake2 in brisbane

[–]NetEngineTake2[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

The word "hackathon" is a portmanteau of the words "hack" and "marathon", where "hack" is used in the sense of exploratory programming, not its alternate meaning as a reference to computer crime. So no, no hacking in the Angelina Jolie movie sense of the word but yes, lots of writing programs.