Problems with Hack Night

1. The biggest problem with Hack Night is that it’s completely unstructured

• Running something unstructured is not the best way to do it bc not a lot of people don’t know what they wanna do
• In most cases they’ll probs feel disengaged and leave
• Try to introduce some sort of structure / let people who know what they wanna do do their own thing

1. Second problem: Starts at 7 but also “Oh it’s a party so come whenever you want”
   • No one showed up for the first hour except for 3-4 people
   • Felt super dead and awkward

Potential Solution: Imagine Hack Night has a structure like a Hackathon

• 7-8PM - Unstructured
• 8:00PM - Opening ceremony of some sort
  • Stop the room and talk for like 1-2 minutes about what’s gonna happen
• Mini-events
  • Workshop dry-runs
  • Experiment with other stuff that aren’t necessarily workshops and not big enough for their own events
    • Open-source thingy
    • Keyboard Showcase
      • https://stackoverflow.blog/2021/09/28/become-a-better-coder-with-this-one-weird-click/
    • Section off parts of the room where that one event is happening
  • Games
    • Jackbox / Skribbl
    • Cupstacking
    • Do it after every other event at Hack Night
  • Demos
    • Aim to have 3 people come to the front of the room and share what they’re working on
      • Someone’s working on a cool game
      • Brennan is making next.js apps
      • One guy was doing cool hardware stuff
    • What would demos look like
      • Super low pressure and informal
      • Emphasize that it’s not a ship

Point system

• Multiple tiers
• Points just for shipping
  • If 3 people react to your ship, you get a higher tier
• If someone ships something they should get a rubber duck or X
• Omg what about laser-cut pins
  • Collectible Hack Night thingies! Like badges / souvenirs
  • Laser cut deep fried thingies!
    • Bechtel Innovation Center Thingy!
      • Does Bechtel provide materials?
        • Don’t worry we have $8k >:)
          • That’s a lot of wood

We should harass companies

• We could def get Mad Mush
  • We have $8k but that’s not a lot of money
  • We need fundraising strategy
• We should try to get back in contact with AWS and Deloitte
  • Rekindle with Bloomberg (they used to sponsor us!)
• Look at smaller companies like fly.io or Vercel
  • “Tell people we’ll use you for our next workshop(s) :)”
  • We can maybe definitely get Vercel!
• Grants!!!!!!
  • Let’s look for them