Hello everyone! What a semester!

The response to HackSoc has been incredible. Myself and the rest of the exec have been overwhelmed with the enthusiasm.

Just wanted to drop a quick post out thanking you all for a fantastic semester.

As previously noted, we’re going to try and bring in some huge improvements for next year. As part of that, we bought on a new exec member earlier in the semester (thanks for all who voted) and have changed our event schedule. Details of the new schedule will materialise over Christmas.

So I wanted to do a quick recap of all the awesome stuff that has happened this year:

  • We have attended 9 national hackathons and had prize winning hacks at 5! Some of the hacks we’ve attended have been some of the biggest to ever be held in the UK, such as Hacked.io.
  • We grew from 35 to 150+ members in 8 months. This still boggles my mind, we never expected this kind of uptake. It’s a bit of a rocky road adjusting to the rapid growth, but I hope the improvements next semester appeal and keep you coming to events!
  • We invested £1000 in equipment and hardware for members to use. Don’t forget about this equipment! We have stuff appropriate for all levels, and adding a physical element to your projects is great fun and increases the speed you can learn new concepts.
  • We held 7 talks, on topics ranging from beginners Python to musical programming. Next semester we’re going to fix the schedule to provide more talks targetted at different ability levels, so any beginners who found it too hard, or experienced members who found it boring, stick with it! Thanks to all of our guest speakers.
  • We held the first ever hackathon in the University. Hackday attracted over 70 hackers throughout the night, and we had some cracking talks and hacks produced. Hackday 2.0 in semester 2 will be bigger and better, details to be announced soon!

So once again, a big thank you to you all for being involved. If you have any comments, feedback, talk requests (or offers), please email [email protected].

Have a fantastic holiday, and good luck in the January exams!

Joe