Advice about forming Hackers Club [closed]

Question

I'm thinking of forming a Hackers Club at work. My idea is that we would meet monthly and at each meeting one member would present an interesting hack he had created. (The hacks presented wouldn't necessarily have to be software hacks; they could also be the sort of things you read about in MAKE magazine.)

There would also be ANSI standard pizza, veggie pizza, and beer and pop available for socializing afterward. I'm even thinking of calling the club "TMRC" even though it will have nothing to do with model railroads.

Has anyone ever tried doing something like this or have any advice?

Powerdive

why was this down voted? those who did, why no explanation here? I think for things where there is no obvious reason for downvoting, there should be explanations. there are plenty of questions about work organisation on stack overflow and I find them really helpful, I don't think they're off topic. – Loosetongued

I didn't downvote you, but why do you need advice when you appear to have it all planned out already? – Glycol

+1 Sounds cool, but I think this should be a wiki. – Biased

Then don't call this a Hacker club, it's a "developer meeting", there's a huge difference, the term hacker doesn't mean anything it did back in the 70s, it's simply a negative term now. – Octaviooctavius

Answer 1

We do this at the office. I call it 'Developer Fight Club'

Usually do challenges of varying difficulty and compete against one another.

At the end of it, we go over our solutions, do code-reviews and discussions, and then use either benchmark results or other people as the deciding factor for who wins.

Typically, the loser has to buy lunch for the winner :)

For ideas of things to do, try stuff from Top Coder, programming questions on Stack Overflow, or even simple "crackme" applications available on different programming sites.

The main rules you'll need to adhere to are:

• Make It Fun
• Make It Educational Make
• Make It Fair

Try to rotate the challenges, so either everyone is really good at the subject, equally bad, or at least mix it up often enough that it doesn't favor one person's skillset too much.

Unsound

Answer 2

If there are women in your 'hacker' group, consider the advice given in the Howto Encourage Women in Linux. Especially the 'meeting places and times' section.

Boozy

Yes, meeting times are completely off topic, certainly. Meeting places, and other considerations, WAY off topic. Because, clearly, they should only meet during 9-5 at the office. – Boozy

Answer 3

This is a little beyond what you asked, but there is good info on how to plan for hackers and how to resolve issues among members in a polite, hackerly manner.

Overview: http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2133.en.html

Videos:
http://chaosradio.ccc.de/23c3_m4v_1500.html
http://chaosradio.ccc.de/24c3_m4v_2133.html

My favorite is the Tuesday Pattern:
If there's a scheduling conflict such that no day of the week is good for everybody, just hold the event on Tuesday. No exceptions! Simple and fair :-)

Estriol