G.HACK

They say ‘time flies when you’re having fun’, and the past 5 years with G.Hack have certainly flown by! As our members were slowly finishing their PhD’s and starting their new adventures (in the UK as well as worldwide), we decided to have one last event to celebrate all the exhibitions, conferences, talks, workshops and public engagement activities we did since establishing G.Hack in 2011. We also wanted to thank all the AWESOME PEEPS involved in G.Hack over the past 5 years as well as all the AWESOME PEEPS supporting G.Hack project in various ways (from funding our activities and inviting us to share our project with the general public to advising us and supporting us relentlessly!).

And what better way to do just that, than to invite everyone who contributed to the project to travel with us down the 5-year long memory lane, as we remember with fondness all the fun we had in G.Hack since 2011!

Nela taking us all 'down the memory lane' and presenting '5 Years of G.Hack'

For all these very special people on this very special occasion, we felt a special ‘THANK YOU’ present was a must, so Katja expertly designed Certificates of Awesomeness (yes, that’s right, AWESOMENESS!) and G.Hack mugs (with photos of different projects we did over the years) so we can give these out to everyone who was able to join us on that Wednesday afternoon (and of course, find a way to get it to the awesome peeps who were not able to come).

(Katja) Inspecting samples and doing final tweaks to mug designs

Web Audio API workshop 'work in process' looks particularly cool on a mug don't you think?

... as do the Certificates of Awesomeness (this one is going to Magda, when she is back in London for her VIVA!)

Katja is going down the list of peeps and writing names on mugs and certificates ...

... which erm ... took a while 🙂

After the presentation, we continued catching up with everyone who came to the event over some very nice food and drinks courtesy of the School of EECS  (a BIG THANK YOU to the Head of School, Geraint Wiggins, for approving the expenditure for this!).

Catching up over food and drinks 🙂

At the very last minute, we remembered to get the camera out and take a photo of the ‘last peeps standing’ so here it is …

Dan Stowell (who is a big fan of G.Hack) with G.Hackers: Becky, Katja, Tian & Mi

A BIG THANK YOU TO ALL THE G.HACKERS WHO MADE THIS PROJECT SO AMAZING! YOU ARE AWESOME!!! 

Pollie Barden, Ilze Black, Melissa Bliss, Nela Brown, Patricia Carlota, Tian Cheng, Magdalena Chudy, Alice Clifford, Ioana Dalca, Sam Duffy, Berit Greinke, Sara Heitlinger, Katja Knecht,Katerina Kosta, Nanda Khaorapapong, Antonella Mazzoni, Kavin Preethi Narasimhan, Laurel Smith Pardue, Nicola Plant, Rebecca Stewart, Mi Tian and Sonia Wilkie.

In June of 2015, we received an invite to present G.Hack project at the ‘Leading Together in the Digital Economy’ event in London and join the panel of distinguished guests (Hamed Haddadi, Sarah Sharples, Sarah Martindale and Helen Thornham) chaired by Andrew Greenman, to discuss a variety of topics from ‘expectations and realities for early career academic in the Digital Economy’ to ‘succeeding in academic fields which are largely male dominated’. Needless to say, it was a very interesting debate!

Hammed Hadadi, Nela Brown and Sarah Sharples discussing work-life balance in academia

Digital Shoreditch 2015 opened up with a roaster of interesting exhibitions, workshops and talks on Monday 11 May including the panel talk: Hackathons-Grassroots Activism or Digital Sweatshops? chaired by Becky Stewart (ex-QMUL G.Hack alumni, turned Codasign co-founder and book author!). The panel speakers included no less impressive, resourceful and full of amazing ideas: Ruth Catlow (Co-Founder and Artistic Director of Furtherfield online community for arts, technology and social change since 1997, now also a public gallery in the heart of Finsbury Park, North London), Gregor Engelmann (PhD student at University of Nottingham and a UK leader for Major League Hacking, the official sanctioning body for the world’s largest student hackathon league – a very busy world traveller indeed), Gerard Briscoe (interdisciplinary researcher mixing computer science, art & humanities, business, social and natural sciences – in other words a man who can do research on just about anything!) and myself, Nela Brown (representing QMUL, CogSci and talking about G.Hack’s ‘grand plan’ of encouraging more women to join hackathons by teaching them how to hack through workshops like ‘Learn to Hack Web Audio API’ we did at Sonar, and  Music Tech Fest 2014 Paris in 2014).

A lively discussion spurred by Becky’s thought-provoking questions covered a variety of topics from diversity and creche facilities at hackathons (Becky), alternatives to 24-hour tech hackathons being 24-day, 24-month or even 24-year art hackathons (Ruth) and applying hackathon model to devising theatre performances (Gerard) to amazing perks and prizes one can enjoy by attending a BMW’s Car Hackathon (Gregor). As a follow up to G.Hack’s workshops at Sonar and MTF, I threw a spanner into works by mentioning the new EU funded project #MusicBricks, organized by our friends at Sonar/UPF and MTF (amongst others), which will aim to incubate the best hacks from Music Tech Fest and Barcelona Music Hack Day and enable hackers to take their products to market! (If you haven’t already signed up for this, your first chance is MTF Scandi happening 29-31 May in Sweden followed by Barcelona Music Hack Day 17-19 June).

Digital Shoreditch 2015 continues until Sunday 24 May and there is plenty to hear, learn and see especially in the basement of Shoreditch Town Hall where you can find the amazing installations conjured up by the QMUL Media & Arts Technology peeps (for which the entry is entirely free – so really no excuse!).

You can also follow the panel speakers:

Becky Stewart @theleadingzero

Ruth Catlow @furtherfield

Gregor Engelmann @UniofNottingham

Gerard Briscoe @gerardbriscoe

Nela Brown  (not big on tweeting & very slow on email due to writing thesis/ pls send a message via a pidgeon or pick up the phone 🙂

Nela Brown, Gerard Briscoe, Gregor Engelmann and Ruth Catlow (and Becky Stewart's funky shoe) at Digital Shoreditch 2015 panel talk

Watch it on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-M1P9hE3WHA

After returning from Sonar 2014, G.Hack team were invited to do a talk about preparation and delivery of their Sonar 2014 workshop ‘Learn to Hack Web Audio API with G.Hack’ at the SoundSoftware 2014: Third Workshop on Software and Data for Audio and Music Research.

Two types of questions emerged at the end of the talk: the ones about the code stability and the usefulness of Web Audio API and the ones about the ‘women only’ hack workshop. We had time to answer a few of them after the talk and the rest were discussed over a few beers at a local pub 🙂

Nela and Katerina presenting at SoundSoftware 2014