On 11 February 2015, Craig Boman wrote:

> Has your library ever hosted a hackathon for university students? If so,
> would you do it again? Anything you wish you had known before hosting the
> hackathon?

We do one---next week it's our third year---and it's gone very well.  It's taken 
a turn towards app-building and entrepreneurship, because of what the students 
wanted to do and a big business school on campus, but it's still a lot of smart 
students hanging around for a day or two, hacking and coding and doing really 
interesting work.

The organizer, Sarah Shujah, wrote up the first one here:

The Steacie Library Dungeon Hackfest: Hackers in the Library Coding, 
Collaborating and Creating, by Sarah Shujah
https://journal.lib.uoguelph.ca/index.php/perj/article/view/2774

Here's the one next week:

http://hackfest.library.yorku.ca/

She and the others did everything you'd expect about getting the word out. 
Talking to profs in key undergrad courses in comp sci and engineering helped, 
and attendance has become an assignment in one course.

Food helps, but we all know that, as does keeping an eye out for people sitting 
on their own and making sure they're enjoying it and have something to do. 
Having university IT developers and admins around really helps, whether they're 
just doing their work or they're acting as helpers or mentors.

Bill
-- 
William Denton ↔  Toronto, Canada ↔  https://www.miskatonic.org/