Less than a week to go until Dublin Science Hackday

There is only a few more days left until the start of Dublin Science Hackday that its happening in Dublin City University this weekend (3rd/4th of March). This is one of the first in a series of exciting events planned for Dublin City of Science 2012 celebration. I have very good experiences of being involved in Hackday events inside IBM and so I expect that getting involved with an even wider public audience should provide even more innovation and excitement.

Initially I was planning to organise for a team comprised of IBM employees to compete in this event, but the reaction to this suggestion was not very positive. On the one hand, employees who had spend a busy week from Monday to Friday working hard on their technology projects, did not relish the prospect of spending a 36 hour stretch of their weekend working on another demanding project. Also some of the organisers felt that it might not set the right tone to have a team of experienced professionals competing against teams that are mainly comprised of enthusiastic students with little practical experience.

Instead I think I will be arranging for some IBM employees to attend the event as advisers either giving training talks on technology topics that would be useful to hackers and/or informally offering practical help to the project teams as they complete their projects.

In any case I am looking forward to an exciting weekend of technology. I saw the great projects completed at previous Hackdays held in cities such as London, San Francisco and cape Town and I know that the Dublin hackers will be just as good (if not even a little better).