Anyone interested in bringing CodeDay to your city?

[edwardj]

Many of you participate in FRC, and know or have heard about the intensity of the six-week build season.

I graduated from high school a few years ago, and I remember the build season really igniting passion in our team, encouraging us to build more.

However, I'm more of a programmer, so about a year ago, a few of my friends and I created an event called CodeDay. It's a coding marathon (or hackathon) where high school & college students get together and build cool apps and games in 24 hours.

Students start the day by pitching ideas for building something they think is awesome, form teams, and then work on building it over the next 24 hours.

It's really fun and intense -- just like FRC, but instead of building a robot, you create an app or game, and your build season is 24 hours.

We've hosted 11 events in 5 cities last year with over 750 student attendees, and our goal is to host 50 events reaching >3,000 students over the 2013-2014 school year.

Would anyone be interested in bringing it to their city? High school students have actually successfully organized CodeDays before -- all you need is to have a passionate team and be willing to learn.

[lynca]

Thanks for the information.

The tough part of the CodeDay model is the 24 hours,
In a typical robotics season, its difficult to find an open Saturday to do a 24hour CodeDay. Do you have any suggesting on how to setup a CodeDay without taking an entire Saturday ?

I would be interested in hosting a CodeDay in Houston, but it would probably not be until the May - July timeframe. The rest of the robotics season is mostly filled up.

[edwardj]

Yeah, 24 hours is definitely a little more difficult to organize, but it's definitely worth it. Right now we try to host CodeDays on 3-day weekends (like MLK day, President's day, Memorial day, etc), so that there's a little less worry about getting homework done & etc.

We're looking into developing a shorter version of CodeDay in the mid-future, but right now it just means the 24 hour event.

Houston would be awesome! We haven't had any events in Texas just yet, and it'd be awesome to get some there! Since May is a bit far out, could you leave us your contact info here?

Thanks!