Hackers at EPFL aims to promote the hacking culture and to foster innovation at EPFL, one amazing event at a time: Make new friends. Make stuff. Make the difference.
At the same time, we want to reestablish the primary meaning of the word “hacker” in the EPFL campus. Too often (especially because of the media) hackers are depicted as criminals who disrupt information systems. Hackers, instead, represent the excellence in software development, hardware tinkering, social right awareness in the digital era, and so forth. EPFL is full of such people, waiting to be united under the same flag. Hackers at EPFL will provide them a “virtual” meeting point, while driving their actions towards benefiting the EPFL community as a whole.
Hackers at EPFL wants to establish two kind of events in EPFL:
A hackathon (also known as a hack day, hackfest or codefest) is an event in which computer programmers and others in the field of software development, like graphic designers, interface designers and project managers collaborate intensively on software projects. Occasionally, there is a hardware component as well.
Hackers at EPFL plans to bring 2 hackathons per semester in the EPFL campus, taking care of logistics, food, contacts with interested companies, etc. The events will be open also to external people, in order to enable cross-pollination, and to strengthen the connections between EPFL students and the fertile developer community in Vaud, Switzerland.
New programming languages, framework, and technologies are born every single day. It is very challenging to keep abreast, unless being part of a thrilling community of people who are willing to meet periodically and teach each other about the latest and greatest.
Hackers at EPFL provides an environment where to propose (and attend) periodic tutorials.
We expect the scheduling of tutorials to become quickly autonomous and driven solely by the members, although the association stays responsible of all the logistic aspects, including food and drinks when needed.
On the longer term, Hackers at EPFL can also become part of CoderDojo. Coderdojo is a global collaboration providing free and open learning to young people, especially in programming technology. We plan to contribute back to the Lausanne area with our skilled association members, who will organize tutorials and workshops for younger students. Our goal is to do our part in motivating young minds towards STEM (an area of study which needs more dedicated people, year after year).
Hackers at EPFL is an inclusive association, which embraces (and encourages) diversity. The hierarchy is almost completely flat: except a few roles (i.e., President, Vice-President, Treasurer) which are needed to officially run the association, each single member will always be referred to as "hacker" (included the 3 people covering the above mentioned roles). The official roles will be rotated yearly, and will be elected democratically by all the members.
All the activities will be based on the do-ocracy concept. Namely, "If you want something done, do it, but remember to be excellent to each other when doing so." Such philosophy has been adopted for years by Noisebridge, one of most famous hackerspaces in the world. It proves to be successful when members are excellent, hence it represents our own way to strive for excellence in both technology and human relations among hackers.
As a do-ocracy is a matter of attitude rather than pure skills, Hackers at EPFL welcomes members of any knowledge level, provided that they are moved by genuine passion and will to learn.