A hackathon is an event where people engage in rapid and collaborative engineering over a relatively short period of time such as 24 or 48 hours. They are often run using agile software development practices, such as sprint-like design wherein computer programmers and others involved in software development, including graphic designers, interface designers, product managers, project managers, domain experts, and others collaborate intensively on engineering projects, such as software engineering.
The Metalab is a hackerspace in Vienna's central first district. Founded in 2006, it is a meeting place of the Viennese tech community, hosting events from cultural festivals to user groups. It has played a catalyst role in the global hackerspace movement and was the birthplace of several internet startup companies.
A hackerspace is a community-operated, often "not for profit", workspace where people with common interests, such as computers, machining, technology, science, digital art, or electronic art, can meet, socialize, and collaborate. Hackerspaces are comparable to other community-operated spaces with similar aims and mechanisms such as Fab Lab, men's sheds, and commercial "for-profit" companies.
A Linux User Group or Linux Users' Group (LUG) or GNU/Linux User Group (GLUG) is a private, generally non-profit or not-for-profit organization that provides support and/or education for Linux users, particularly for inexperienced users. The term commonly refers to local groups that meet in person but is also used to refer to online support groups that may have members spread over a very wide area and that do not organize, or are not dependent on, physical meetings. Many LUGs encompass FreeBSD and other free-software / open source Unix-based operating systems.
HacDC is a hackerspace in Washington, D.C., and a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. According to one member's description, "HacDC members improve the world by creatively rethinking technology. We break, build, and occasionally abuse technology in the pursuit of greater knowledge about how it works and re-purpose it to build new things." In March 2009, its activities were described by The Washington Post. In April 2011, its activities were also mentioned by FastCompany., and NPR's All Tech Considered.
TOG is a hackerspace in Dublin, Ireland. tóg is a word in the Irish language; one of its meanings is 'to build or construct'.
The maker culture is a contemporary subculture representing a technology-based extension of DIY culture that intersects with hardware-oriented parts of hacker culture and revels in the creation of new devices as well as tinkering with existing ones. The maker culture in general supports open-source hardware. Typical interests enjoyed by the maker culture include engineering-oriented pursuits such as electronics, robotics, 3-D printing, and the use of computer numeric control tools, as well as more traditional activities such as metalworking, woodworking, and, mainly, its predecessor, traditional arts and crafts.
Noisebridge is an anarchistic maker and hackerspace located in San Francisco. It is inspired by the European hackerspaces Metalab in Vienna and c-base in Berlin. Noisebridge describes itself as "a space for sharing, creation, collaboration, research, development, mentoring, and learning". Outside of its headquarters, Noisebridge forms a wider international community. It was organized in 2007 and has had permanent facilities since 2008.
Random Hacks of Kindness (RHoK) is a global community of technologists dedicated to solving problems for charities, non-profits and social enterprises by organising recurring Hackathons that has existed since 2009. The organisation currently has a presence in over 20 cities throughout 5 continents, and had 2000 participants in 2017.
The Global Editors Network (GEN) was an international association of over 6,000 editors-in-chief and media executives with the mission of fostering digital innovation in newsrooms all over the world. GEN had three main programmes: Editors Lab, the Data Journalism Awards, Startups for News, as well as an upcoming hub for the international data journalism community. The organisation’s flagship event, the GEN Summit, gathered over 830 participants from 70 countries. The GEN newsletter was read weekly by more than 13,800 subscribers. It is a non-profit, non-governmental association.
Hackerspace.gr ('hsgr') is a hackerspace in Athens, Greece, established in 2011. It operates as a cultural center, computer laboratory and meeting place. Hackerspace.gr promotes creative coding and hardware hacking through its variety of activities. According to its website: "Hackerspace.gr is a physical space dedicated to creative code and hardware hacking, in Athens".
Baltimore Hackerspace is a hackerspace, sometimes called a makerspace, located in Baltimore, Maryland. Its creation has been inspired and modeled after the many other Hackerspaces around the United States and Europe.
Geeks Without Bounds is a humanitarian organization of technologists, first responders, policymakers, and volunteers that work towards improving access to communication and technology. With a focus on working with communities that have limited infrastructure due to violence, negligence, or catastrophe, they organize hackathons for humanitarian technology, and help prototype projects intended to turn into long-term initiatives through their Accelerator for Humanitarian Projects.
HackerOne is a company specializing in cybersecurity, specifically attack resistance management, which blends the security expertise of ethical hackers with asset discovery, continuous assessment, and process enhancement to find and close gaps in the digital attack surface. It was one of the first companies to embrace and utilize crowd-sourced security and cybersecurity researchers as linchpins of its business model; pioneering bug bounty and coordinated vulnerability disclosure. As of December 2022, HackerOne’s network had paid over $230 million in bounties. HackerOne’s customers include The U.S. Department of Defense, General Motors, GitHub, Goldman Sachs, Google, Hyatt, Lufthansa, Microsoft, MINDEF Singapore, Nintendo, PayPal, Slack, Twitter, and Yahoo.
HackerNest is a not-for-profit organization and global movement founded on January 11, 2011. The organization unites local technology communities around the world through community events and socially beneficial hackathons to further its mission of economic development through technological proliferation. It is Canada's largest, most prolific technology community with growing international reach.
The NASA International Space Apps Challenge is an event where NASA Subject Matter Experts author challenges relating to real-world problems on Earth and Space and/or current NASA initiatives. Participants from around the world can form teams that work to develop solutions through the use of NASA and its Space Agency Partners’ open data over the two-day hackathon event.
Junction is a hackathon organizer with headquarters Espoo, Finland. Started in 2015, Junction grew to be one of the largest organizers in Europe. In 2018 it expanded globally with a Junction event at Tsinghua University in China and cooperation with Chinese and South Korean universities bringing high performing students to attend the event in Helsinki.
The g0v movement, or g0v, is an open source, open government collaboration started by Chia-liang Kao ("clkao"), ipa, kirby and others in late 2012 in Taiwan.
NaijaHacks is a hackathon and tech invention competition in Nigerian, which aims to encourage youth to use technology to create solutions for their communities and the world using technologies including blockchain and artificial intelligence. Officially, NaijaHacks is described as an official national "Movement of Makers, Leaders, and Disruptors".
Capture the Flag (CTF) in computer security is an exercise in which participants attempt to find text strings, called "flags", which are secretly hidden in purposefully-vulnerable programs or websites. They can be used for both competitive or educational purposes. In two main variations of CTFs, participants either steal flags from other participants or from organizers. A combination of those two styles would be called mixed. Competitions can include hiding flags in hardware devices, they can be both online or in-person, and can be advanced or entry-level. The game is inspired by the traditional outdoor sport of the same name.
