Get the most out of Local Hack Day!

It's finally here! December 2nd, 2017 marks the 4th annual MLH Local Hack Day - a worldwide celebration of learning, building, and sharing. Over 275 communities around the world are hosting simultaneous 12 hour hackathons where developers, designers, and makers will join forces to bring their crazy ideas to life.

This page has everything you need to know to get the most out of Local Hack Day 2017. With the help of our wonderful sponsors, we curated lots of great resources and activities to make the day unforgettable for participants everywhere. Make sure you read this page thoroughly, and let us know if you have any questions.

Happy hacking! #LocalHackDay

Day-of Resources

Here are a handful of links and resources that will be useful on Local Hack Day.

Opening Ceremony Video

Watch MLH's co-founder, Jon Gottfried, welcome everyone to Local Hack Day. During this video Jon will cover what to expect throughout the day and many of the awesome resources that are available through MLH and our sponsors.

Other Links

Here are some other links that may be useful throughout the day. Below you will find everything from how to submit your project to how to stay in touch with other hackers and more!

  • Connect with the Community on Slack - Join our Slack channel to connect with other hackers and ask for mentorship.
  • Submit your project on Devpost - Post your project on our official DevPost page to share what you made this weekend with the world!
  • Code of Conduct - At MLH we believe that hackathons should be safe and welcoming spaces. This event, like all MLH events, is under the official MLH Code of Conduct, which you can read here.

Workshops

Learn something new today by attending a virtual or in-person workshop.

Getting Started with GitHub Pages & Jekyll

During this workshop, you'll learn how to build and deploy your first website on GitHub pages using Jeyll. Specifically, we'll create a basic blog, learn how to make changes to it, and finally deploy it.

Brought to you by .

Electron: Start to Finish

Electron is a framework for building desktop apps with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. During this workshop you'll learn to create your first Electon app and distribute it cross-platform to any computer.

Brought to you by .

Creating your first Atom Plugin

Atom is a hackable text editor for the 21st Century that was created by GitHub. During this workshop, you'll learn to create an Atom plugin. Specifically you'll be making a dictionary plugin that users can use to look up words.

Brought to you by .

Getting Started with Twilio

Twilio makes it easy to send and recieve text messages and phone calls right from your apps using the technologies you know and love. During this workshop, you'll make a simple application that demonstrates these capabilities.

Brought to you by .

Actvities

Need a break from hacking? Participate in one of these fun Local Hack Day activities
and you just might win yourself a cool prize!

Draw an Octocat, Win an Octocat!

Everyone loves Octocats, GitHub's adorable mascots. You could win your very own Octocat statue by drawing one and tweeting it out. Bust out your paper and colored pencils (or design medium of choice!), it's time to get creative. We can't wait to see the amazing Octocats you imagine this weekend!

Instructions: To enter, tweet your drawing at @GitHubEducation and @MLHacks with the hash tags #MyOctocat and #LocalHackDay.

Take a Git Selfie.

Celebrate a breakthrough or recognize a struggle with a git selfie. Just snap a selfie when you’re at a special point in your project and tweet it to enter. The top 5 photos of Local Hack Day will each win a GitHub Octocat Plushie.

Instructions: To enter, tweet your photo at @GitHubEducation and @MLHacks with the hash tags #LHDGitHubSelfie and #LocalHackDay.

APIs & Freebies

Looking for a cool API to hack on? Need a place to publish your hack on the Internet? You've come to the right place! Our sponsors have assembled a ton of great freebies and promotions for you to use on Local Hack Day.

GitHub

With the GitHub Student Developer Pack, you get the best developer tools out there like private GitHub repositories, HackHands programming help, SendGrid e-mail API credits, Stripe payment processing, and more! All you need to do is sign up and verify that you are a student.

Get the Student Developer Pack

Twilio

Twilio takes care of the messy telecom hardware and exposes a globally available cloud API that developers can interact with to build intelligent and complex communications systems.

Build SMS, phone calls, video chat, and more into your projects with the most powerful communication platform out there.

Upgrade your account and use promo code LHD2017 for $25 in credit!

Learn how to add the credit to your account with this tutorial.

Sign up for Twilio

Clarifai

Build amazing apps with the world’s best image and video recognition API.

Clarifai automatically tags all your images and video so you can quickly organize, manage, and search through your content. It’s fast, easy, and incredibly accurate.

Sign up at Clarifai.com to get started!
Enter the promo code localhackday in the Billing section of your dashboard.

Create an AI hack and send a video to [email protected] so you can be featured on the Clarifai blog!

Sign up for Clarifai

Hasura

Hasura provisions a managed server (single-node or a cluster) for you in minutes. Each server comes with data, auth, filestore APIs (BaaS) backed by postgres, that instantly integrate with your app.

Host custom code in any language on this server with just a 'git push' (APIs, webapps, static-files).

Check out the replay of "Building Apps Quickly at a Hackathon" webinar and start building on the free-tier at hasura.io.

Sign up for Hasura

Domain.com

Domain.com is giving every MLH Local Hack Day attendee a FREE .com, .net, or .org domain name plus free WhoIs Privacy (make sure to enable WhoIs privacy when you check out)!

Make your project easy to discover with an awesome domain name. It could be for your new startup, your personal portfolio, or for your MLH Local Hack Day project.

Learn how to update your new domain's DNS records here so that you can point your domain to your server.

Use your unique promo code at checkout for your free domain.

Get your free Domain name

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

MLH student hackers are eligible to receive $100 in Amazon Web Services (AWS) credit to host their hacks in the cloud. AWS has the latest, greatest tools used by companies like Adobe, Airbnb, Spotify, and more.

Sign up today and get ready to deploy your next project to AWS!

Get your $100 AWS Credit

Special Thanks to Our Sponsors

Presenting Partner

Event Sponsors