The Boston Hack Day Challenge

I have a theory that the increasing number of these kinds of events ("let's get together and hack!" or "The Foo Contest!") are basically just thinly veiled efforts to attract, identify and hire talent. A next-generation replacement for the traditional "post job descript, sift through tons of resumes, figure out who to call, setup interview, devise lame questions, hyper-over-analyze every nuance (on both sides), make decision based on proxies for what we want rather than actually what we want" paradigm of employee recruiting.

And if so, I think it's a great thing! Let's see more of it. It's progress. Folks using their brain.

I'm going. I have my own full time project, that I am trying to spend every minute I have on right now. But, I want to work with some clever people on something that I can see really working over the weekend. It doesn't take TOO much time and the mental exercise, and fun to see some cool quick projects happen will be a great energizer to keep me going on my main project and see it through.

The idea I am taking to the hack day is a mobile to mobile one-time-pad twitter encryption tool so people like those organizing the protests in Egypt can communicate and organize in the open with those they trust.

I'll be there! Any other HNers going?