The BarcampLondon Hackathon

BCL Hack is happening on 15 & 16 Jun 2024 in Stratford, East London.

When was the last time you went to a Hackathon? Here are 20. And only 2 of these are still running.

Battlehack, Hackference, Leedshack, HackToTheFuture, CambridgeHack, Hackcess, AngelHack, HackCamp, Inventorthon, HackTheMidlands, HealthTechIdeaHack, MusicHackDay, SpaceAppsHack, LondonHackathon, BlockchainHack, AstonHack, MentalHealthHack, WikiHack, NHShackday, HackBournemouth

The usual suspects had become used to going to regular hackathons. However, since the Covid-19 lockdowns there don’t seem to be many of them around. So the aim is to bring you a BarcampLondon Hackathon. With a general theme, and not a narrow one:

Go out and do some good in the world

Developers, designers, coders, creatives! Everybody! Over one weekend can you and your team build something meaningful, or impressive, or just a barrel of laughs?

A handful of challenges will be set by our sponsors. Datasets and APIs will be available. Your hacks and presentations will be evaluated by a panel of judges.

Prizes are awarded. The event includes a general Spirit of the Hack prize which is not connected with any particular challenge. It’s awarded to the team that impresses the judges with their enthusiasm, their all round abilities and their whole hearted participation. You don’t have to be an expert in anything, your hack doesn’t even need to work, just be a willing part of it all! You and your team will be eligible just by being there.

Come on your own, or come as a pre arranged team. Teams are typically four strong, although that’s not a hard and fast rule. We aim to help you find team mates (if you need them) early on the Saturday. Late on Sunday afternoon, after the prize giving, there will inevitably be a trip to the pub!

All things being equal, this is going to happen in May or June 2024. Yes, we know, we will avoid a clash with EMFcamp.

The #hashtag is #bclh24

What is a hackathon anyway? Here’s a handy run down:

https://tips.hackathon.com/article/what-is-a-hackathon

The Menu

Dietary requirements are catered for

A wide ranging discussion with the catering team at UEL has helped us to formulate a menu which caters to a number of dietary requirements. We have a full list of participants and their preferences, and will pass this to the caterers on Monday 10 Jun 2024, a few days before the weekend event.

Hence we know the numbers with vegan, vegetarian and Halal needs. All of the meat available over the weekend will be Halal. Tea and coffee will be available throughout, and the site has water fountains so we recommend that you bring your own refillable bottle.

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There is a cold buffet lunch on both the Saturday and the Sunday. Subject to last minute issues the plan is to offer assorted sandwiches, Dim Sum, crispy battered prawns, tomato & onion salad, and a three bean salad. There may be minor differences in the range on each day, as the catering team also has vegetarian samosas, skewered chicken tikka and pesto salad on the list.

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A hot buffet will be provided on the Saturday evening. The tailor made chicken supreme dish will contain only ingredients which meet Halal requirements. The tailor made vegan dish is a dairy free Moussaka with courgette, potato and aubergine. The evening meal is accompanied by a chef’s salad with artisan bread.

We are grateful to our Silver Sponsor Ermi who has stepped up to provide you with the hot evening meal. More details of what Ermi does are here. They will already be familiar to many on the Barcamp London circuit.

Sunday morning sees the team providing a simple breakfast which will include a variety of pastries and fruit.

We’re still on the look out for more Gold and Silver sponsors. Does your organisation want to offer a challenge, or sponsor a lunch?

Waiting List

All of the tickets have now been taken, and there are already a number of people on the waiting list. A lot of time and effort has been put into this event by the Barcamp team and by the venue team. The sponsors are providing you with a free event and free food, so please do try to be there for the whole event. If for any reason you have to drop out then you should let us know in advance please. Return the ticket using the Eventbrite page and somebody on the waiting list will be so grateful! It also gives the new attendee the chance to be there at the start and to make full use of the available time for hacking.

Likewise, the sponsors and the organisers will be really happy that nothing goes to waste! Please help us to help as many community members as possible.

Thank you.

Kittens, Teams and Laptops

The last few tickets

A couple of days ago social media was graced with our furry friends, who announced that there were just a few tickets remaining for the hackathon on 15 & 16 June 2024. Assuming that there were two handfuls of tickets left on Thursday just gone, then we are now down to one handful!

Any tickets left? Please tell us there are tickets left! Can we still get tickets?

If one of your friends or colleagues wants to come along, then now is the time to grab those final attendee tickets, we are talking about single digits! There is a separate ticket list for organisers and sponsors, so this news is just for regular participants who want to hack. Get your ticket now!

Naturally, we’d be happy to accommodate another sponsor or two on the VIP list.

Once all of the regular tickets have been taken there will be a waiting list in operation. If you later discover that you cannot make it, please return your ticket (via the Eventbrite page) and we will release it to people on the waiting list.

Team work

The Great Hall at UEL is massive, and it easily seats 100 people. We anticipate that teams of four will be the norm, and the sponsors are planning to have prizes in clusters of four. Other team configurations are fine, just remember that if you win one of the challenges, then there are four prizes for the winning team.

You can arrive with friends with your team configuration already in mind, or you can agree something on the day. If you’re expecting somebody to be in your team, and they don’t have a ticket, they won’t be allowed in! Be sure that you each have a ticket. Check with them now!

Seeking collaborators

For those who are completely new to this there will be guidance, and after the challenges are announced (at about 10.30am on the Saturday) there will be some helpers and dialogue to connect you with would be collaborators. Non standard team sizes are fine, though groups of four tend to work best. Be ready to discuss your skill sets, your ideas, and indicate who would be an asset in your team. Perhaps “a couple of these, one of those, and somebody with a working knowledge of time machines”. At least one of your team is going to end up on stage doing a 3 minute presentation of what you’ve built (and why it should win a prize). You can all go on stage if you like, it’s just normal for one or two team members to actually demo the hack. And you have only 3 minutes to showcase it.

We’d like you to tackle one of the set challenges and be eligible for a prize. There will be at least four challenges on offer. Your hack is to be new, unwritten and original at 12 noon on the Saturday, and be ready 24 hours later at 12 noon on the Sunday.

Premeditated thought is OK, but writing code in advance is not allowed! Team names are up to you, and the more amusing the better. Remember, the theme of the Hackathon is “go out and do some good in the world” and your hack should adopt this ethic.

What to bring to the event

Each cluster of tables has four chairs and is provided with 240v electricity via a trailing cable with four sockets. You will need to bring your own laptop and charger (and any phone chargers too). Just be aware that it’s an old building and even though the wiring is modern, there are not many outlets. They won’t cope with 100 devices plugged in all at the same time. Some power sharing arrangement needs to be agreed amongst the members of each team. Please arrive with a fully charged laptop so that you can help your team mates manage demand.

The University wifi is provided in conjunction with their IT partner Sky. It takes about 7 clicks to set up an account for The Cloud if you don’t already have one. It’s robust and can cope with hundreds of students. But please don’t hog all the bandwidth!

Attendees with pre existing eduroam or govroam accounts will find that those networks are also available.

The stage will be used on the Sunday afternoon for presentations to the judges. The projector takes an HDMI input. If your laptop needs a dongle, then please bring your own dongle to connect to the HDMI cable provided. The AV facility on the stage also has a visualiser. In theory that should allow you to place a mobile phone under the viewer and everybody can see it on the big screen. This is one of the things that the team will be checking when they do the next venue visit.

Thanks to our sponsors Proactive, dxw, Infobip and Jamie+Lion it’s going to be good!

Why Volunteer?

We asked ProactivePaul

Yes ProactivePaul, why volunteer? How did you end up involved in Barcamps and Hackathons?

That’s a long story which can be distilled into ten simple bullet points.

   A screenshot of Lotus123 for DOS

● Sort of by accident, not by choice, ProactivePaul became an accountant.
● In 1988 at Coopers & Lybrand (now PWC) the office gained it’s first computer, equipped with little more than Lotus123 for DOS.
● Suddenly, Paul became the office computer expert, allegedly knowing everything and anything you can possibly know about computers.
● Not wanting to “die as an accountant” Paul retrained as a teacher of ICT.
● Dozens and dozens of 14 and 15 year olds persuaded him that he didn’t really want to be a teacher any more.
● Paul returned to the world of accounting and worked at the British Medical Association.
● The BMA had him do some ad hoc lecturing at CPD courses.
● Paul left the BMA to set up his own business, Proactive.
● In a pub in 2008, chatting with some bloke at the PHP London MeetUp, Paul heard about Barcamp which combines Tech and Education.
● Not only did that cover his personal passion (technology) and his personal ethos (to teach) it also helped him gain some new customers for his new business! Big win!

Nowadays you can find ProactivePaul at all sorts of tech community events, as an attendee, a speaker, a team member, an organiser and/or as a sponsor. This year #BCLH24 is underwritten financially by Proactive.

Outside work ProactivePaul lives up to his name. He likes travel, he speaks five foreign languages badly, and he runs 10km races. Sometimes half marathons, and rarely a full marathon. He’s currently preparing for the Loch Ness Marathon on 29 Sep 2024.

At Hackference 2018 in Birmingham (in the space of a single weekend) he combined doing a hack, with being a sponsor, and being a judge, and taking the Sunday morning off to run the Birmingham Half Marathon. He literally finished the race, quickly showered, immediately presented his hack to the judges, and then disqualified himself from winning anything because he was also on the judging panel. Keep taking the tablets Paul!

Anyway, as an accountant ProactivePaul is the first to admit that he is not the accountants’ best accountant. He’s different. He doesn’t do numbers for the sake of doing numbers. He’s doing it because his customers want something. They want a decent standard of living and complete peace of mind.

Paul’s greatest strength is that he is communicative, and he speaks your language. He speaks Tech!

Is your accountant Proactive?

Why Volunteer?

So to answer the question “why volunteer” it’s about a sense of service. It’s about giving something back to society. It’s something ProactivePaul wanted to do as a teacher, and he just felt that the odds had been stacked against him. Now he does it via the Tech community.

Hence the theme of #BCLH24 is “go out and do some good in the world”.

What can you do to make a difference?

A Myriad of Helpers

Community Project

The Barcamp community is a varied mix of people who all share a passion for technology. The summer Hackathon is a fun loving, good natured competition, setting teams the challenge of building a hack and (possibly) winning a prize.

The Barcamp in the autumn is a participatory unconference with a mix of serious and amusing sessions.

Plans are already underway for Barcamp London XIII in late autumn 2024. We need to see the football fixtures first (and avoid certain dates) before we can announce anything. We should know the football dates by mid June, hopefully just in time for an announcement at BCL Hack 24.

The people on the team who stage these events are unpaid volunteers who give their time freely, just for the joy of immersing themselves in tech activities, and for the craic of meeting like minded people.

The respective venues, The University of East London (in the summer), and The Academy of Excellence (in the autumn) know that we’re an informal not-for-profit organisation, and they moderate their fees as best they can to help accommodate us.

We rely on you, the community, and the sponsors to make all this happen! Yes, we still pay for quite a few things!

Jamie + Lion

Jamie Knight and his plushie sidekick Lion are well known faces in the tech community. They have been on the London tech scene for about 20 years, with a pedigree covering the BBC, Apple, HSBC and a variety of international conferences.

The business Jamie + Lion has stepped up as our first Bronze sponsor, and this web site is functional thanks to them. They build digital products for the web, for mobile, for game platforms and beyond, with an approach that centres on understanding and removing barriers. Digital accessibility, inclusive design and neurodiversity need support in all organisations and getting the right advice helps you build better products and services.

Thank you Jamie + Lion for being active members of the community.

Volunteers

The current team will need some help during the hackathon weekend on 15 and 16 June, and four or five volunteers would be welcome. Nothing arduous, just helping people with guidance. The Saturday morning will see some teams turn up ready formed, and others coalescing naturally. Newcomers may want a hand joining or forming teams, or may simply want guidance on the extra challenge of preparing a solo entry. A facilitator or two would be an asset.

At other times, volunteers may simply need to guide people around the venue, maybe move some boxes or chairs, help the venue’s security team or catering team with crowd management, and generally be all round good eggs.

If you’re able to spare a little time, let us know in advance, and we’ll gladly add you to the volunteer list.

Publicity

The current attendee list, and the current sponsor list is healthy, and it could be bigger! More than 66% of the tickets have been taken, and the sponsors have made big inroads helping us with the budget. We need some more though.

• More attendees.
• More sponsors.

And we particularly need two more challenges. At least two! So, please share news of the event with everybody you know. Use the two metre rule. If anybody comes within two metres of you tell them about BCLH24.

There are discussions underway already, with more potential sponsors. However, you might have a perfect match in mind, and if you do please point them at the Packages page.

Sponsors

To date, we are delighted to have these resilient organisations on board already!

Proactive is the “go to” solution for Devs and Designers who need proper help with their accounts and tax returns.

dxw is an independent digital agency improving lives by working in partnership to design, build, and operate inclusive public services.

Infobip is a global leader in the field of omnichannel communication helping to overcome the complexity of consumer communications.

Jamie + Lion provide workshops, mentoring and support to help organisations build inclusive products and services.

Tickets are Live

Grab a ticket – the hackathon takes place in this impressive venue

The University of East London operates from three sites. The original campus on Water Lane Stratford is the one we’re using, and they have kindly agreed to allow the use of The Great Hall. The entrance to The Great Hall is now on Romford Road, the older entrance having been retired. There is a smaller second campus in the centre of Stratford, and a new one further away in Docklands. You’re aiming for the big, original campus!

 

The nearest station is Maryland on the Elizabeth Line and it’s an easy walk. It’s also perfectly walkable from Stratford Station which is just ten minutes away. The benefit of using Stratford Station is that it’s served by five lines:

• Elizabeth Line
• Central Line
• Jubilee Line
• Docklands Light Railway
• London Overground – Mildmay Line

There are also eighteen bus routes serving Stratford, with routes 25, 86, 308 and 425 all passing directly along Romford Road. The best stop (eastbound) is labelled “Water Lane University of East London – Stop MK”. If you’re travelling westbound (or southbound on the 308) then the nearest stop is “Atherton Leisure Centre” (or on route 308 aim for UEL Stratford Campus – Stop MR – right next to the old entrance for The Great Hall).

The venue is not open overnight. We will need to leave at 9pm on the Saturday, and we can return at 8am on the Sunday. The schedule is here.

Catering

The catering team is exploring options, and we have asked for cold buffet lunches on both days, and a hot dinner on the Saturday evening. A light breakfast will also be available on the Sunday morning. Tea and coffee will be routinely available. The venue has water fountains so please bring a reusable bottle.

Who would like to sponsor one or more meals? We’d like some help from Silver Sponsors. The Silver Sponsors get their name in the headlines regularly, a speaking slot, and extra emphasis at each meal time. Please get in touch with Proactive Paul events@electronical.ly

Challenges

Two challenges have already been announced. Thank you dxw and Infobip.

The Environment Challenge    

The Digital Communication Challenge

We’d like at least two more Gold Sponsors please. Who do you know who wants to be deeply involved?

Tickets

The tickets went live on Friday and nearly half of them have been taken! Get yours now if you haven’t done so already. And share the news please, we’d love to see many more new faces, and a lot of the old crowd too. We’re especially keen to cater to UEL students across all subject areas. If you’re a current student say hello to us on Mastodon or Twitter. This is a grass roots community, and we’re a friendly bunch!

UEL Sustainability

We’re delighted that the University of East London is hosting the Barcamp London Hackathon this year. It takes place over the weekend of 15 and 16 June 2024, at the historic Water Lane campus in Stratford. The University also has a second campus in Stratford, and a further one on the edge of Docklands.

We were privileged to have a tour of The Royal Docks Centre for Sustainability recently. It’s an imposing, modern building on the Docklands campus just across the water from City Airport.

Head of the new centre, Robert de Jong welcomed a variety of guests (encompassing business and industry leaders across East London) for a discussion about driving a healthier and more equitable future. He pointed out that what was once CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) is now a collective responsibility across all aspects of the community to deliver a sustainable future. Collaboration is key, and Rob encouraged us all to do just that.

What is sustainability? Dr Meera Tiwari reminded us of Brundtland’s definition from the 1987 UN study.

Sustainability: meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

The centre is home to a new start up accelerator, due to open any day now, and it needs tenants who are focussed on sustainability. Large, open coworking spaces are complemented by a handful of enclosed offices in various sizes, a mini kitchen and a break out space. These are all available to suitable businesses. Beyond the accelerator there are many study rooms, a VR room (with plenty of open floor space), a “living library” which is a massive, adaptable, multi purpose room, and a hacklab. The hacklab is open to all, and amongst other things has a number of 3D printers and a 2 metre tall robot arm! If you’re interested in using the space you should enquire about the induction sessions which are currently handled on Monday afternoons.

Completely unexpected, and one of the highlights of the day, was a visit to the Sugarcrete lab. This is where R&D work is being done on sustainable building materials.

By taking sugarcane bio waste, and combing it with a number of different resins, bonds, or agents, a variety of building blocks can be made. They are robust, strong and are a lot heavier than you might imagine. The wide bricks shown at the bottom left of this image are being used to construct a school in India.

Sugarcane is the world’s largest crop by production volume. It grows quickly and provides one of the fastest CO₂-to-biomass conversion mediums available, up to 50 times more efficient than forestry. It’s also readily available across much of the Global South.

The theme of the Barcamp London Hackathon is “go out and do some good in the world”, and the team at UEL are certainly doing that!

InfoBip – Welcome Aboard!

Stepping up as our latest Gold Sponsor is InfoBip.

Infobip is a global leader in omnichannel engagement, powering a broad range of messaging channels, tools and solutions for advanced customer engagement, authentication, and security. They help their clients and partners overcome the complexity of consumer communications, grow their businesses, and enhance customer experience – all in a fast, secure, and reliable way.

Infobip takes pride in quality engineering which is the backbone of everything they do. To build great customer solutions on the edge of innovation means hiring, growing, and retaining the best engineering talent across the world. Their engineering powerhouse has had impressive growth over the last 15 years with more than 65 offices, across 6 continents. With over 3,000 experts Infobip aims to change the way the world communicates.

They see themselves as humble engineers led by a philosophy of learning by doing and that’s fuelled by a passion for technology. That’s why all the solutions are fully developed in house, and Infobip is truly proud of its robust talent base across the globe!

Find out more about the things you can do with the product stack. Check out the Infobip Developer Hub!

Or join the Discord community and hang out with like minded people who are passionate about developing conversational business projects!

Weekend Catering

Food and drink will be provided throughout the hackathon weekend on 15 and 16 Jun 2024.

At a meeting earlier this week (on Thursday 14 Mar 2024) the venue team at UEL worked through a draft menu which includes lunch, dinner, breakfast and lunch. A variety of vegan options are included. All the meat options are Halal. Tea and coffee will be available constantly.

UEL has given us a quote for all that, and we think it’s proportionate. However, we definitely need some Silver Sponsors to help us cover the cost of catering! Where should we be looking? Feel free to drop us a line.

Please welcome dxw

Our first sponsor dxw is well known in tech circles.

dxw is a public sector focused digital agency which designs, builds and runs inclusive public services. As an employee owned company their success is judged by their results and not by performance on any stock market or in the eyes of external shareholders. dxw is committed to building high quality, sustainable services. In fact, it’s in the deeds. It’s a tight knit team which has worked together to meet big challenges across the public sector.

In the digital space it’s important to focus to value for money and that means understanding the quality of what’s built. It means a focus on commercial teams which understand what shape a team needs to be in order to deliver the right outcomes. It means understanding accountability and learning from past performance. We all know that a price-per-head dynamic dominates commercial conversations. But there’s no point hiring cheaper people if services are less reliable and slower to build.

What are you trying to build? Touch base with dxw to see how they can help.

Challenges

The first challenges are briefly outlined on the BCLH24 website.

dxw is providing the Environment Challenge and will announce more details later. It involves their current work on air quality across several London boroughs.

Two more challenges are needed. So the BCLH team is looking for two more Gold Sponsors. Who do you know who is actively looking to participate in the tech sector?

Ticket Release News

We hope that you will be able to join us for the BarcampLondon Hackathon over the weekend of 15-16 June 2024. The venue is the University of East London in Stratford and the schedule was published in February.

 

Agreements are already in place with three sponsors whose details will be up on the site as soon as we have the necessary image files and dialogue. Two challenges will also be announced soon. Sponsors have exclusivity in their field, and we currently have prizes related to:

• Healthcare
• Communications
• Spirit of the Hack

We need three more sponsors in any speciality, and are especially keen to focus on the theme “Go out and do some good in the world”. That might include things like . . .

• Environment
• Finance
• Data protection
• Open Source
• Transport
• Education

. . . and any number of other worthy specialisations. Who do you know who wants to raise their profile? Please point them at the Sponsor Packages page.

Tickets

The first tickets will be released at 12.00 noon on Good Friday 29 March 2024. The tickets are free. So they will be popular, and you should get yours as soon as you can. Admission is by ticket only. Tickets must be pre booked and are not available on the day. And ticket holders will need to agree to our Code of Conduct.

We hope to see lots of you there. Please spread the word. Who else do you know who needs to hear this?

Schedule

The BarcampLondon Hackathon Schedule for 15-16 June 2024 has been announced. Admission is by ticket only. Tickets are free. Although they must be pre booked and are not available on the day.

Saturday	15 Jun 2024
09:30	Venue opens
10:00	Welcome talk
10:30	Challenges
11:00	Team building
12:00	Coding starts
12:30	Lunch
18:00	Dinner
21:00	Venue closes
Sunday	16 Jun 2024
08:00	Venue opens, breakfast
12:00	Coding stops
12:30	Lunch
13:30	Presentations begin
15:30	Presentations end
16:00	Awards
16:45	Closing talk
17:00	Venue closes