Hackathon 4

• Date: Saturday, March 19, 2011 (corresponding with the Global Hackerspace Challenge
• Time: 12:00 (noon) - 20:00 (8pm)
• Location: LES.net - 130 Portage Avenue East at the old Nutty Club building (big red door by the #130, use the doorbell, listen for the click)

Summary

March 19 marks the fourth SkullSpace Hack-a-thon, and is looking to be our biggest yet! It will run from noon - 8pm at LES.net's office, and feature a few talks/projects throughout the day. Everybody is welcome to come down, participate in talks, or do their own thing. The point is to get together, meet new people, and have some fun!

The event is completely free, but we'll be happily accepting donations. If you can afford $5, $10, $20, or more, you can help support the cause! We take cash, cheque (made out to SkullSpace Winnipeg Inc), and paypal.

Projects

Having set projects will be an experiment that I'm hoping will work well for us. The idea is that we have a few projects going on during the day, led by somebody who can answer questions and get people started. The "leader" won't necessarily be working on their project, but they're the person to talk to if you need help/advice.

We strongly believe in learning and teaching, so no matter what your knowledge level is, feel free to get involved!

Leader	Name of project	Description
Andrew	Launchpad	Launchpad is a low power, low cost, programmable device made by Texas Instruments. It's a great way to get into embedded development! Andrew is also doing a talk on Launchpads, see below for talk times.
Mak	Nmap Scripting	Writing scripts for the Nmap Security Scanner tool. This includes reverse engineering protocols, learning how software works, and finding security vulnerabilities.
Martin	Arduino	Embedded, programmable, and highly sophisticated devices. Martin will also be doing an introductory talk about Arduinoes (see below for talk times)
Ron	BreachDB	An online site to archive and track data breaches. This will be written in Ruby and MySQL. It uses an aggressive caching mechanism due to the speed of queries, and manages a huge amount of data.
(open)	Quadrocopter	Les has a Quadrocopter that's controlled by iPhone software. We're hoping to look at the protocol it uses and see if we can control it ourselves!

Other miscellaneous projects that won't be "officially" led (unless somebody wants to): Possible projects

• Wireshark plugin development
• Gameboy DS hacking
• SkullSpace Challenge
• Bo-Keep memberfee plugin

Talks

We're hosting a few talks during the day. These will be short and informal (except for Mark's, which will be interactive and breaks new ground).

If anybody is interested in doing talks for April's hack-a-thon, please let me know (info @ skullspace.ca) as early as possible and we'll add you to the list!

For this month, these talks are very basic. We're hoping to ramp up and do some more "advanced" talks in later months!

When	Who	What	Details
13:00 - 13:15	Ron	Welcome to SkullSpace	A quick introduction to SkullSpace, our members, our mission, and our current situation. A great time to ask questions about what we're up to!
14:00 - 15:00	Mark	Plone
16:00 - 16:15	Martin	Arduino	What is an Arduino, how are they used, and what kind of cool stuff can we do with them? Martin is also leading the "Arduino" project, so you can ask him questions here or track him down all day.
18:00 - 18:30	Burke	Fuck Yeah Nounts!	Burke, Stef, and Tim created an Internet sensation earlier this month with the launch of FuckYeahNouns.com. Burke's going to talk about how he built, maintained, and promoted the site, despite repeated issues with being banned from image searches and copyright violations.

Talks for next hack-a-thon (or that will be given if a speaker can't make it):

• Russ - GIS
• Andrew - Launchpad

What we need

If you have any of this, or can borrow it, please let us know! info @ lists.skullspace.ca

Some things, like food, we may have to get everybody to kick in some money unless we find somebody who's willing to sponsor.

Item	Status
Projector/screen	Mike will bring
Networking gear	Provided by LES.net
Food	Still needed
Snacks	Ron will bring cookies More snacks appreciated
Drinks/coffee	Still needed
Tables/chairs	LES.net has about 10-15 seats Mike will bring what we need
Recording gear	Andrew and Mak will take care of recording the talks (and possibly streaming)

Donations and new members

Part of our goal is to raise donations for getting our own physical space. Anybody who wants to bring a cash or cheque is welcome to! We'll record how much you donated and add it to our startup cash.

The other part of our goal is to get the word out to more people. Bring friends, co-workers, and anybody who might be interested. They don't have to come all day, just long enough to get some free stickers!