👋 G’day friends!
I’m wrapping up my first week in Vermont at HQ, that’s meant working full time on Assemble (the IRL we’re running in SF in early August) for a week.
Organising can be a ton of fun, but also a megaton of stress (wow! those damm American units!). I imagine Hack Clubbers will find or have found themselves in similar positions when organising. It feels like one second I’m super excited about swag but the next second my heart is racing over the stress of contracts. So, I’ve decided to sit down each Friday and write a short journal running through challenges we’ve faced over the past week, things that went really well and some things I’ve learnt along the way. I’ve never done this before, so here we go!
Just for today, I thought I’d kick off we’ve some background on what was going on leading into this week. The “Assemble” project began on a call between @zachlatta & I on May 19th, then a team of a dozen Hack Clubbers was assembled (pun not intended!). We searched and searched for venues (this was a long and painful process), until we found Figma, who confirmed we could use their amazing office space on June 24th. Whilst we’d been waiting we’d built out a fair few iterations of what our website & launch would like. It wasn’t great for a while, which meant a lot of late night Zooms and deleting code but in the final hours we began to love what we had! And then came the launch: assemble.hackclub.com & hackclub.slack.com/archives/C0266FRGT/p1656174230399229.
On my first day of work (Tuesday), here’s where we stood:
So now you’re all caught up! Let’s get into this journal.
So, it’s starting to get cold which means it’s Friday evening is fast approaching (I’ve got to speed up), here are five things that stand out from the week as things that were really positive:
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Our Team Sync - This only happened a couple of hours ago, but wow, it is always really nice to get everyone into the same Zoom room and to just talk thing through! Organising any event is a big mountain to climb so it’s nice to do it with friends. I’ve also found that your mind can get stuck on things for days but a quick conversation with someone who comes to the table with a fresh mind can unblock it. Eureka! This week I’ve done 12 hours of meetings, that’s a lot more than you’d do for a normal hackathon (being paid full time to run an event means people expect you to work on it full time and I have a wonderful boss, @karamassie, who stops me from getting distracted) but I have found them to be really helpful to get me unblocked.
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hackathons.hackclub.com - This website is the gift that keeps on giving! By getting our hackathon on to there we became the first Google result for “high school hackathon san francisco”. We’ve received a fair few registrations from that which is wonderful. 10/10 would recommend.
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Workshops - I’m really excited for how we’re doing workshops at Assemble! @bashbaugh & @quackduck are working wonders creating a plan that brings the Hack Club Workshops we run into high schools to the scale of a hackathon. We’re letting attendees take charge and share their passions in there own workshops sessions! The vibe of workshops at hackathons can often feel off, but the way we’re doing it I feel like we’re going to achieve a friendly, fun and wacky vibe, also known as the Hack Club vibe IMO.
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Swag - We have a wonderful swag connoisseur on the team: @hugoyhu. Swag (as well as prizes) is an area of infinite possibilities, @hugoyhu is doing a great job at exploring it! I’m excited because we’ve got some epic swag ideas but @hugoyhu would never allow me to spoil them :D
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Outreach - We wanted to have a gender-diverse set of attendees at Assemble but our initial marketing attempts weren’t achieving that too well to say the least! To get the ball rolling on improving this, @abbyfischler (with the help of @maxwofford and @christinaasquith) reached out to other non-profits inside and outside of the Bay Area to spread the word! And as I looked over our registrations this afternoon I can see it’s starting to work… there’s still a way to go but we’re at least on the path (and this is the positive section!). Anyways where I’m going with is people want to help and people are kind, so don’t be afraid to ask!
Ok, so we’ve done the positives, that’s great but to be frank this week has been tough! Here’s the six big challenges for me this week:
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The 500 Things in “The Back of My Head” - I just keep stuffing things to do back there! Running a hackathon, there’s no one telling you what to do and when to do it like there is in school. Now that’s great and all, but it means I’m stressing about forgetting things and feel like absolute chaos all day every day. I’m working on it and haven’t figured out much of a solution other than taking long walks (people must think I’m insane when I walk out of the office in a trance) and writing everything down (I just need to start doing this all in one place). Will update the journal next week as I figure this out!
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Meetings - Wait weren’t a meetings a positive? Yes but also no. They’re wonderful but I feel like I’m left with no time to work on the hackathon! I just talk about it a lot. @maxwofford sent me this wonderful article that really helped me: http://paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html. I’d recommend it! Also working in an office means impromptu meetings, so sometimes I escape to the park bench.
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Visas & Travel - Wow-e! Visas are a massive pain. @karamassie, @bellesea & @devenjadhav have been putting everything into manifesting as many visa acceptances as possible. Shoutout to them! Travel in general is a logistical nightmare, so be aware! There’s not much you can do to solve this other than being as organised as possible and putting a lot of time aside for it.
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Communication - What you think makes sense in your head may make zero sense to anyone else. So check your emails with others! (this reminds me to check this journal with someone!) This journal is a space that to be honest… I have very little solutions to this yet, so I’ll update next week.
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Paperwork - Unfortunately, paperwork is something that comes up when organising hackathons and can pull your attention away from the fun! The solution seems to be to just get it out of the way. (Another solution is to have some one as amazing as @kara help you out with it all!)
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Imposter Syndrome - Last challenge is something that seems to a bit of a buzz word with programmers. Assemble follows three awesome Hack Club summer events: The Hacker Zephyr, Summer of Making & Flagship. I’m not going to lie, that’s creating pressure! My solution seems to be to take a deep breath and to give Assemble it’s own space to shine instead of comparing it with other things!
The words are clocking up on this post so I think I’ll make this a rapid fire round and a bit of TLDR!
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People are awesome, kind and want to help.
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Take things slowly and things will begin to come together.
- (follow up to that) Don’t try to do everything at once, you’ll end up doing nothing.
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Hack Club’s resources are truly awesome (eg. the Hackathon site & Bank).
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Organising a hackathon is hard. (but fun!)
I just wanted to finish this journal off with a bit of gratitude to counteract the occasional moaning that seems to have came out of this journal. Also, we don’t say thank you enough in this world! Thanks to all the wonderful Assemble team members, because nothing would happen without them. A trivial example would be one morning I woke up to 20-odd emails and was like ugh, but then they’d all already been responded to! You all are the best and are legends. Thank you. Thanks to Hack Club for bringing me out here (Vermont is amazing!!!) and giving me the time and space to create Assemble. Thanks to everyone at the office for being so welcoming whilst also putting up with all sorts of shenanigans (though, very few people showed up to the office on Friday… maybe I drove them away…). I’m immensely grateful to everyone and for everything this week, thank you.
My fingers are getting tired! I’m going to wrap this up and say thank you for taking the time to read this… sorry for the rambling.
With gratitude,
Sam
Now for some fun extras!
I recently learnt about MaDonal, an Iraqi knockoff version of McDonalds! Now I really want to try some “Big Macks”.
Being in rural* America is a massive cultural shock for a boy who lives in Singapore! That means way bigger bottles of soda, so much frozen food (I can barely cook so this is great… but @christinaasquith) has been kindly providing me great food 🙏) and massive supermarkets. Food is a big part of my life if you haven’t realised. Last thing because I’m starting to ramble… the distances are insane!
And here’s my desk (’Merica!):
* ok so everyone complains that where I am is not rural! It feels like it though…
That’s all from me! Adios!