Howdy, What’s going on here?

Science Hack Day Houston is going on. April 11th & 12th, 2015 at the Houston Museum of Natural Science.

My attention’s piqued, tell me more

A Science Hack Day is all-day-all-night event that brings together inquisitive and creative minds to one place, to make wonderful things. Designers, developers, engineers, scientists and all card carrying geeks proudly bring their A-game to the same physical space for a brief but intense period of collaboration, hacking, and building ‘cool stuff’. By collaborating on focused tasks during this short period, small groups of makers are capable of producing remarkable results. Please register beforehand here.

What’s a Hack? Am I going to get arrested? Is this line bugged?!?

No, a hack is a quick solution to a problem – maybe not the most elegant solution, but often the cleverest. On the web, mashups are a common example of hacking: mixing up data from different sources in new and interesting ways. Hacks can be either software or hardware (or a mix) and aim to bring to life interesting science.

I don’t think this is for me, I’m not really a science person..

Science Hack Day is for anyone with an interest in bringing science and technology together. If you’re a coder, designer, scientist, maker or simply an enthusiastic person with good ideas, Science Hack Day is for you. It is a social event with creativity and love of science at it’s heart. Let’s make some cool stuff.

You had me at Science! Just give me the deets already!

Here is the schedule. The day with starts with “lightning talks” where people can pitch ideas they would like to work on. After this everyone breaks into teams (usually of 4-6 people) and starts working on bringing that idea to life. You don’t have to come with a team and it is not unusual for people to float around a few different groups before settling on an idea they like.

I get scared at nighttime, will you leave the light on for me?

The event will be in full flow all throughout Saturday night. We’ll supply the necessary caffeine to make this happen, but if you do want to get a few hours of sneaky sleep in, we will have a quiet sleeping area (bring a sleeping bag). We also understand that some people do have homes to go to, and kidnapping is illegal, so you are free to go to them and return in the morning to continue hacking fresh as a daisy.

Will there be prizes? I collect shiny things

Yes, there are 6 different categories, but bragging rights is the biggest prize of all.

What sort of things get made? I made a 100 piece jigsaw once.

Yes that is very impressive, but maybe you will be more impressed by the cool projects made by people at previous international Science Hack Days. Before the event kicks off you can add any project ideas you are interested to list of projects here . There will be lots more projects made on the day.