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Last weekend’s “Open Sauce” Hackathon was a big success. In addition to the funding I mentioned in my previous post, GitHub also got in touch a day before the event to bolster each prize category with one-year bronze and silver accounts.

Last year I attended the inaugural School of Computer Science & Informatics “Open Sauce” Hackathon as a participant. It was a hugely successful event, and good fun to work with Mark and Chris in building Motion Kitty Pi, a prototype Spotify home music streaming service for Raspberry Pi (with motion-triggered playback!

I’m co-organising the “DigiSocial” hackathon – an exciting attempt to adapt the hackathon format to scientific research and bring together a number of Cardiff University schools, including Social Sciences and Computer Science & Informatics, to stimulate interdisciplinary research.

I spent last Sunday at Box UK’s “For the Social Good” hackathon. It was a very successful event and big thanks to Box UK for putting it on and providing a venue, food, and prizes.

Having attended and organised a few hackathons recently, I’ve been impressed by their ability to glue together the local tech community, university students, and local companies. Hackathons work best when they have some sponsorship behind them; this lends some status to the event and, of course, cash to incentivise participants with food and prizes.

I’m co-organising the Cardiff Foursquare Hackathon with Chris Gwilliams and Martin Chorley. The Cardiff School of Computer Science & Informatics is kindly supporting it with facilities and enthusiasm. It will be held on the 17th and 18th September, in conjunction with the Global Foursquare Hackathon event.