A Yearly Hackfest for Designers and Developers

Tammy Butow I'm so excited to see Ivan and Jess' game has gained so much popularity! We are interested in making a viral video for it as well. Customers are really excited that it was made in such a short amount of time:) We will be holding our next Lets Hack Melbourne App making day on August 8th TBC. We are looking for an awesome venue like the Zoo or Aquarium! :)

Julia S (Community Manager) Hey Tammy, is the brick game available for iphone as well?

Tammy Butow Hi Julia, it's only for the iPad sorry!

Julia S (Community Manager) :( I hope that my disappointment inspires them to make one for iPhone as well. Have you got anymore deets for the next letshack?

Tammy Butow Not yet! A few people have been asking, so I really need to organise something. Ivan told me that he's got it working on the iPhone but it's got a little bit left to go till it's finished and then he will put it on the app store! :) I'm still tossing up whether to do it as a big event and get sponsorship and prizes or to keep it small.... I like big things! Like getting 100 + developers / designers / marketing folk together for 5 hours to create something would be AWESOME

Jeanette Miller This sounds amazing Tammy. Congratulations to all you guys for what you created..

Tammy Butow Thanks Jeanette! RT @zzymyn: @tammybutow #letshack Beach Brick: over 1200 downloads in the past 3 days. Get it free for the iPad! http://bit.ly/bhnbDd

Tammy Butow We have a website: http://letshackmelbourne.com :)

Tammy Butow http://letshack.eventbrite.com/

Tammy Butow We are totally sold out! That went really quick! :)

Tom Killen Count me in! This looks great

Tammy Butow Awesome Tom! :) Happy to hear you will be coming along!

Drew Schrauf Sounds great! Count me in too. Perhaps the first port of call should be to make a Facebook group? It's probably the easiest way to get the word out.

Tammy Butow Cool! Thanks Drew, Facebook group will be great :) Need to think of a good name first.... hmmmm any ideas everyone?

Julia S (Community Manager) Now that I know what the term hacking means, it's got to include that. Is it cool if people who don't know much tag along?

Adrian Kosky Hi Tammy, thanks for the education regarding the word hack! Sounds like a great idea you have here, and much may come of it. I may be able to contribute help in the way of a space, albeit a country one. I am open to new and creative ideas and this one sounds great. My inner techie is only just surfacing, but I am sure you have all the qualities needed there. I do have wifi. and a sense of adventure.

Tammy Butow We decided to call it Let's Hack Melbourne, it will be on the first weekend of June at Inspire9 :) We will open registrations using Event Brite soon... it will be limited numbers to 12 due to space, but we will have a UStream of the final products at the end of the day as well :) That way people can see what we make!

Tammy Butow Hi Adrian, Thanks for the offer! I will chat to everyone about a country hack day, that would be really cool and it would be a great way to think of things we can create for the local area :)

Julia S (Community Manager) Hi Tammy, I want to come along but am not a developer. I'd like to blog the event; I can bring my own laptop and sit on the floor! It's such an awesome idea to showcase what people have built.

Tammy Butow Hi Julia, I'm sure we can find you a comfy chair! :) Would be cool to have you there and hear your ideas also! :)

Rebecca Lucas Hi Tammy, would your hackathons be interested in creating a website for a cash restricted mum of twins who wants to start a small online business?

Tammy Butow Hi Rebecca, thanks for getting in touch. I will let everyone know and see what they think. Our first meeting is June 6, so I will be able to get back to you then! Cheers!

Rebecca Lucas Thanks Tammy, looking forward to hearing from you. If you want to know a little about my online business plan, just let me know.

Lauren Williams Try ringing your local council - libraries often have group study rooms you can book for free with free wifi. They might also have larger spaces that they use for this sort thing. This sounds like the kind of thing your council or state government would love to get behind, so contacting you local council, local councillor or local member would be a great place to start.

Julia S (Community Manager) Hi Tammy, welcome to PlanBig. Thanks for uploading your plan: you gave me a heart attack when I saw the word "hack" but it's all good. Internet education is something that is sorely lacking in Australia. It's what we need instead of the proposed internet filter! I'd suggest partnering up with a cool cafe that has wifi and doing some sponsorship/cross promotion for the event. There is a cool gamers bar in Brisbane http://www.manabar.com.au/ maybe you could contact them and find out if they have any suggestions of similar places in Melbourne? The best way to get word out about your plan is to start with your friends, share it with them and get them to comment, then you will have more visibility on PlanBig. I’d also recommend checking out some of the other plans on PlanBig and leaving a comment, start with http://www.planbig.com.au/Free-Community-Intranet and http://www.planbig.com.au/Common-Ground . I hope this helps. Keep us posted on what you need.

Tammy Butow Today inspire9 contacted me via twitter and said that they might be able to host! :) They are a web development agency in Melbourne with co-working space! Will keep you posted! http://www.inspire9.com.au/ Sorry to almost give you a heart attack! From good old wikipedia..... A hackathon, a hacker neologism, is an event when programmers meet to do collaborative computer programming. These events are typically between several days and a week in length. A hackathon refers not simply to one time hacks, but to a specific time when many people come together to hack on what they want to, how they want to - with little to no restrictions on direction or goal of the programming. and .... he term "hacking" is often incorrectly used to refer to more nefarious criminal uses such as identity theft, credit card fraud or other actions categorized as computer crime; there being a distinction between security breaking and hacking, a better term for security breaking would be "cracking"

Julia S (Community Manager) That's awesome Tammy, thanks for clearing that up for me. I'm all over hacking like a rash.