I recently supervised a Hackclub Counterspell event at our office. I was there only in the capacity of being an adult in the room, for health and safety and safeguarding reasons.
The entire event had been organised by a single teenager, with mini workshops, hack time and a global show and tell.
Kids that attended were not only coders, but musicians and artists as well.
The whole event was amazing, with more pizza than I thought it possible to eat.
The kids produced some genuinely interesting games, learned some new skills, and had a great time socially.
I fully intend to support more events in the future.
I will dive into the webpage a bit better later on, but at a glance I don't seem to be able to find how to 'help' as an adult. Would love to either organize or help something in my town.
I could only find a slack channel to join but no other public info. Was this how you got in touch with them? Or did I miss something?
HackClub is great. I feel like I aged out of their target demographics recently though.
I can share my single and very positive experience with them.
In summer 2020 (I was 18 then), they were going to host/sponsor some hackathons (IIRC), but because of Covid they couldn’t do that so instead they gave away that money to students who had some project idea. If your project was accepted you got $100 for it - but you had to share the result with the community.
I applied and got that 100, and used it to make a remote-controlled mobility scooter [0] with my friend. Not the most useful thing in the world but it was ton of fun!
I saw the Hack Club presentation at the Ubuntu Summit 2024 ("How 30K teenagers build open source software") and it was an unexpected highlight of the conference for me. I'd expected it to be a boring kids program, but Hack Club looks very cool! https://youtu.be/AdgU-_1vDco
ArchiveBox uses HackClub Bank, their FSP platform (like Open Collective but better) and we love it. I enjoy using it more than any other billing/invoicing system I've used, and I'm constantly amazed at the quality of software they're able to put out with a team of teenagers!
I helped develop hackatime (https://github.com/hackclub/hackatime/) this fall for our latest project high seas, and it's been a truly amazing experience. I'm 16, and I never thought I would be maintaining and operating a program with over 17 thousand users and 25 million+ rows! It's been a wild ride that I don't think I would have gotten without hackclub :) Also just in general the community is amazingly supportive; I joined a little over a year ago and I've made a ton of really amazing friends that I hope I can keep for the rest of my life ^_^
Hackclub is currently running a program for high schoolers until January 31st where time spent working on hobby projects is rewarded with prizes. By my understanding the pay rate is about $2-5 dollars per hour, so no replacement for a full time job but if you have kids that code for fun something is better than nothing!
Hack Club has absolutely changed my life, I live in a suburban area and there are not many people interested in tech but Hack Club has allowed me to find people like me. I’ve done things I’ve never thought I would do and it’s been such a great thing in my life.
Can home-educated teenagers with government issued ID join? Throughout the site, high school student and teenager seem to be used interchangeably.
At https://hack.club/high-seas-faq: "Who can participate in High Seas?" "Anyone 18 or under can participate in High Seas![...]" "Why do I have to verify?" "We need to make sure that you’re a high school student.[...]" "What form of ID is accepted?" "A government issued ID (eg. drivers license or passport), or A dated school ID[...]"
The front-page talks about giving away
"Get free Raspberry Pis, Framework Laptops, iPads, and more."
Oh they do have transparency on it.
I was confused about the "fiscal sponsorship"
tab since it appears also to be a product they are selling
at 7% of income.
They appear to do well with nearly $6 million USD(?) in their
"checking account)
Good for them.
Founder here. Donations are the vast majority of Hack Club's revenue and make it possible and free for teenagers. Donate here: https://hackclub.com/philanthropy/
501c3 nonprofits can ‘fiscally sponsor’ projects that are too small for their own nonprofit but still need all the same legal/accounting/finance support. Some of that $6M in their checking account will ‘belong’ to the projects they are sponsoring. Basically like a nonprofit incubator.
this is so cool. hats off to the creators. I bet it's a ton of logistics to manage. I surfed around the site but couldn't find any information re: volunteering with them? I wonder if they need them and what kind of commitment it would be? I'd be interested!
I love Hack Club because it's truly one of the most radically kind & creative spaces on the internet. Before I found Hack Club, programming felt very solitary to me. It didn't really feel like it's something I could do with other people, yet alone myself. But since then I've found community, made friends, and pushed myself to build things I never knew I could make. Along the way, I've got to attend crazy hackathons like Outernet (which we ran on a campground in VT), and got to organize Canada's largest & biggest high school hackathon back in May (https://apocalypse.hackclub.com), and have all sorts of other adventures.
> in the Hack Club Slack (Discord-style online groupchat), you'll find a group of 27,253+ fabulous ...
See, in my head Slack comes first before Discord. It was released, after all, 2 years prior. My mental shortcut for Discord is that it's like Slack but for games so it has better audio support. But here it's the other way around.
It's ok ~ perhaps the on-ramp path is Discord -> Slack -> IRC :).
[+] [-] MarcScott|1 year ago|reply
The entire event had been organised by a single teenager, with mini workshops, hack time and a global show and tell.
Kids that attended were not only coders, but musicians and artists as well.
The whole event was amazing, with more pizza than I thought it possible to eat.
The kids produced some genuinely interesting games, learned some new skills, and had a great time socially.
I fully intend to support more events in the future.
[+] [-] hmcq6|1 year ago|reply
Creatives are Creatives. Don't reduce yourself as a programmer purely to a scientist. There is an art in what we do.
Edit: if you disagree then tell me why I have a religiously strong opinion on spaces vs tabs
[+] [-] odshoifsdhfs|1 year ago|reply
I could only find a slack channel to join but no other public info. Was this how you got in touch with them? Or did I miss something?
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] bartekpacia|1 year ago|reply
I can share my single and very positive experience with them. In summer 2020 (I was 18 then), they were going to host/sponsor some hackathons (IIRC), but because of Covid they couldn’t do that so instead they gave away that money to students who had some project idea. If your project was accepted you got $100 for it - but you had to share the result with the community.
I applied and got that 100, and used it to make a remote-controlled mobility scooter [0] with my friend. Not the most useful thing in the world but it was ton of fun!
[0]: https://youtu.be/WWUe42dH6nw
[+] [-] slavik81|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] taylorbuley|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] eleveriven|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] nikisweeting|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] clacker-o-matic|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] internetter|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] aramsh|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] malted|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] dang|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] frankacter|1 year ago|reply
1) I see the mention of highschool throughout, what about younger hackers that are 13+ (7th & 8th grade)?
2) The directory (https://directory.hackclub.com/) is not working for me. Are there existing clubs in Asia? Specifically Taipei, Taiwan.
[+] [-] creditscoresong|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] __rito__|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] mingyeow|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] ThinkBeat|1 year ago|reply
The front-page talks about giving away "Get free Raspberry Pis, Framework Laptops, iPads, and more."
Oh they do have transparency on it. I was confused about the "fiscal sponsorship" tab since it appears also to be a product they are selling at 7% of income.
They appear to do well with nearly $6 million USD(?) in their "checking account) Good for them.
[+] [-] zachlatta|1 year ago|reply
We also make a very small amount of revenue through the fiscal sponsorship program the other commenter mentioned: https://hackclub.com/fiscal-sponsorship/
[+] [-] mikeyouse|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] radioblahaj|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] cschep|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] linsomniac|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] jamietanna|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] AdamEXu|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] peterburkimsher|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] radioblahaj|1 year ago|reply
I love Hack Club because it's truly one of the most radically kind & creative spaces on the internet. Before I found Hack Club, programming felt very solitary to me. It didn't really feel like it's something I could do with other people, yet alone myself. But since then I've found community, made friends, and pushed myself to build things I never knew I could make. Along the way, I've got to attend crazy hackathons like Outernet (which we ran on a campground in VT), and got to organize Canada's largest & biggest high school hackathon back in May (https://apocalypse.hackclub.com), and have all sorts of other adventures.
I'm really grateful for Hack Club :)
[+] [-] hackgician|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] replwoacause|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Tolexx|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] bow_|1 year ago|reply
> in the Hack Club Slack (Discord-style online groupchat), you'll find a group of 27,253+ fabulous ...
See, in my head Slack comes first before Discord. It was released, after all, 2 years prior. My mental shortcut for Discord is that it's like Slack but for games so it has better audio support. But here it's the other way around.
It's ok ~ perhaps the on-ramp path is Discord -> Slack -> IRC :).
Seriously though, this is really impressive. Not just flashy UIs, they actually have an intro to Assembly: https://github.com/hackclub/some-assembly-required
Kudos to these teenagers.
[+] [-] rodneyg_|1 year ago|reply