What to Bring

The Barcamp London Hackathon is on Sat 15 and Sun 16 Jun 2024. Here’s a run down of what you need to bring with you.

Enthusiasm – there’s a general Spirit of the Hack prize which is not connected with any particular challenge.

• Be impressive!
• Be enthusiastic!
• Be an all rounder!
• Be committed to participation!

You don’t have to be an expert in anything, your hack doesn’t even need to work, you just need to be a willing part of the event! You and your team will be eligible for the Spirit of the Hack just by being there.

If your hack addresses the theme “go out and do some good in the world” then you’ll be one step closer to winning a prize of some kind.

Ticket – No ticket no admittance. All the tickets have been released and a waiting list in is operation. Bring your ticket with you please – on paper – or on a digital device. No ticket no admittance no exceptions! If you no longer need your ticket please return it (via the Eventbrite page) and we will release it to somebody on the waiting list.

If you are offered a waiting list ticket, you have 24 hours to claim it, else the offer will pass to the next person on the list

Life Support Systems – Bring a refillable water bottle! The venue has water fountains and you will benefit from having your own bottle with you all the time. We have arranged food for regular meal times. Vegan, vegetarian and Halal food is available. The venue closes at 9pm on the Saturday and reopens at 8am on the Sunday. You need to plan your options as the site will close completely for the night. The full schedule is here.

Laptop – You will need to bring your own laptop and a charger (and probably a phone and charger too). Please arrive with a fully charged laptop so that you can help your team mates manage demand for 240v. The number of power sockets in The Great Hall is a bit limited. The video input to the projector takes HDMI or VGA. You may want to bring your own dongle if you use a MacBook. The audio over HDMI has proved troublesome. An audio feed is available via a 3.5mm lead, but that relies on your laptop having a 3.5mm headphone socket.

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.

Pen and Paper – Even if you don’t plan out your work on paper, or sketch rough diagrams, or doodle aimlessly, you are going to need a pen! A pen is vital for playing Challenge Bingo on the Sunday. And we have an assortment of cheap, trivial and disappointing prizes for all Bingo winners! A bunch of weird and wonderful snacks from Japan.

Bag – If you’re one of the Challenge winners then you’ll need enough space in your bag to take home a prize. Some of them have arrived already, and they’re sitting in Proactive Towers. More are on the way.

A Positive Mental Attitude – Everybody is welcome at #BCLH24, please respect the code of conduct and respect one another. Some of you are old hands at this, and some of you are completely new to hackathons. For the newcomers 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 who can cure all known diseases and alleviate world poverty”. 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 are currently 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.

The team name prize is some Crunky chocolate! We think that should be “Crunchy”, but it says “Crunky” on the packet!

Appreciation – Bring bucket loads of appreciation. This event is not cheap to run, but it’s all free to you (with food included) thanks to our generous sponsors Proactive, dxw, Infobip, Ermi and Jamie+Lion!

Go out and do some good in the world