Midnight Hacking: How to form a doers group.

I started a similar group this semester at UMass Lowell called Maker Club. However, instead of just coding we work on hacks and crafts of all kinds.

In the month since our first meeting we've done a variety of things like making catapults/trebuchets out of popsicle sticks and rubber bands, made giant bubbles, and played Portal using the kinect.

The semester is winding down, but I'm planning on having some hack nights next semester, both general and themed. On general hack nights the club will provide the food and caffeine as long as people are working on something. On themed hack nights everything we make will involve a certain theme. Also, if there's a student or professor who wants to show how to do something like knitting or creating a web page we'll provide them with the supplies they need, take care of the paperwork, and promote it. All they'll need to do is show up.

That's one of a few things I have planned for next year, and I'm going to be planning more over the summer.

This would be an awesome idea, if I knew anyone that stayed up past 10pm (besides myself -- I'm up 4pm to 10am) and didn't have to take the kids swimming every weekend. Being the only single workaholic daydreamer with ambition in your circle of associates and friends and coworkers pretty much blows. :)

I wish I could do this. I don't know any coders in real life. I guess that's what I get for being the programmer at an art school.

We ended up starting a similar thing at Univ. of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. It began as a group of friends coding together, and over the past year or so it has developed into a series of Hack Nights and we get sponsors sometimes. We've even done a few Hackathons, one of which is happening right now. 24 hours of straight hacking! http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=119736848105223&in...

I started the same thing here at school, I call it hack fridays.

And since I'm part of the campus CS group, we even have food :)

I highly recommend doing something like this.

There is a stockholm night owls group too http://stonightowls.com

A group of 40 or 50 people that meet every few months.

If more and more people join, does that cut down on overall productivity?

It's probably parabolic with some max number of people for optimal productivity before the next guy just starts ruining it for everyone else

We did this for about 2 months (on Friday nights) at my current organization, but then the guy who organized this got busy with something else and no one else picked up the initiative.

I'm up for something like this. Would be in for something around LA / Santa Monica / Long Beach. Could get space / use mine if needed (in Long Beach).

Anybody in SF interested in starting a group?

Anything in Seattle/Eastside?

Anyone interested in the Atlanta area?

We call that Sunday's Hackaton here

I think the most interesting part of this post is the "Bloggin with friends" tagline. Isn't this the real social network? I would love to see a platform that facilitates this (a la posterous groups).