Amidst the business card swaps and free cocktails of South by Southwest Interactive, Google gathered a League of Extraordinary Hackers for drinks, cupcakes, talks about Chrome and Android, and...their own version of Hack Club?!?
That's right! A few weeks ago, we were contacted by Boris and Chris of Google who were putting this event together. We clicked on the page for their event and were flattered to find this:
We admit it. We were totally inspired by Breadpig's Hack Club and wanted to bring the same experience to SHDH@SXSW.
We immediately agreed to cosponsor the event and provide prizes for the winrars. The competition was fierce: 12 teams of 3-6 people only had 4.5 hours to build their sumobots before the double-elimination tournament began. At the end of the night, Team #Tigerblood walked away with a $500 gift certificate to anything from the XKCD/Breadpig store; runner-up Beam Me Up, Scotty and creative award winner Super Team Domination each got $250 for their efforts, as well. More importantly, though, all the LEGOs used in the tournament were donated to charity afterwards! It's good to see that our do-goodery is contagious.
For more detailed reporting, check out Boris' writeup. Remember, if you want to start your own Hack Club, I made a handy guide you can refer to!
Reunited with our LEGO friend Steven!
An appropriate shirt for the event
Teams getting started
Mindstorms are $200, but they are so easy to quickly make prototypes with!
How awesome would it be if there was a cheaper kit for your average hackerspace to run hackclubs with?
Yay!