
YC at Hack the North - Robeson
https://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-at-hack-the-north
======
hamhamed
For anyone who is still looking for a place to crash:
[https://www.stay22.com/events/hack-the-
north](https://www.stay22.com/events/hack-the-north)

We offer Airbnbs and Hotels around the campus

For the organizers..if you want you can embed directly on the website to help
other attendees: [https://www.stay22.com/events/hack-the-
north?promptembed=tru...](https://www.stay22.com/events/hack-the-
north?promptembed=true)

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HorizonXP
Excited for this. I went last year, and it was a fantastic time, and there
were a lot of really great projects. Should be great again.

If anyone is going to be there, sound off, it'd be great to get together and
share stories.

~~~
eligundry
I wish I could have gone to Hack The North. I did meat some students from
Waterloo at MHacks and did some awesome projects.

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bakztfuture
This is an awesome initiative, props to YC and Hack The North for arranging
for all of this. About to submit my office hours app for
[http://www.startuptimelines.org/](http://www.startuptimelines.org/)

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jorkos
Will there be a recording made of the session? Hope so.

~~~
kartikt
yup!

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sandworm101
Hack the north? Waterloo is north?

Contrary to popular belief, not all of Canada is a frozen northern wasteland.
Waterloo is further south than 11 US states. It's about as "north" as the
south of France (Got to love google maps). Save the north talk and the arctic
midnight motif for when you come to UNBC.

The term "hack the north" suggests some effort to deal with uniquely northern
problems such as a lack of broadband and poor access to satellites.

~~~
VicVee
Hey there,

I'm the guy who named the hackathon.

Back in 2013, there was no big Canadian hackathons part of MLH. We were
originally going to call it Hack Waterloo or Waterloo Hacks or something along
those lines. But the issue we had back at the end of 2013 is that none of the
other schools really knew where Waterloo was.

We wanted a name that people could identify with an area. And considering all
of the biggest undergrad hackathons are in the USA, and completely without
argument South of us... Identifying as the North isn't really off base.

I believe DubHacks (U of Washington) is the only major US hackathon that is
North of us.

Also, who doesn't identify Canada as the North? We aren't just a hackathon at
Waterloo. Hell, over half our attendees don't even attend UWaterloo. We're
Canada's largest undergraduate hackathon. That's what matters. We're
identifying as Canada at a hackathon that just happens to be in Waterloo.
Basically, we wanted a name that we could use even if we changed the venue to
be anywhere in Canada.

You got pretty bitter over the name of a hackathon. As I said, a lot of our
attendees identify Waterloo as being North of them. Because it is. Its Canada.

As for your last sentence:

Does HackMIT sound like a hackathon in which you deal with problems faced only
at MIT? Does Boilermake sound like a hackathon in which you make boilers? Does
PennApps make it sound like its a hackathon in which you make apps for UPenn
students?

Its a name that identifies us as Canadian without explicitly being called Hack
Canada because we didn't want to be too overarching as to bother the other
hackathons in our Country.

Hey, who knows, maybe we eventually will make a hackathon in the style of
WHacks (our 2014 April Fools prank) and call it Hack the North:
[http://whacks.info/](http://whacks.info/)

~~~
sandworm101
Two points: 1) "The north" is an actual area, with unique technological
problems, none of which involve southern Ontario. Canada has particular
relationships with "the north" in areas from climate change to Native rights
to arctic sovereignty. Canada even has a minister Aboriginal Affairs and
Northern Development. Waterloo is certainly not on his radar. "The true north"
may be in the song, but you won't hear many Canadians refer to all of Canada
as any north.

2) "Hack the north" suggests some sort of event dealing with northern
problems. HackMIT is accurate because it involves MIT. It's not a call to hack
(verb) MIT but MIT is a physical place an it is at least happening at that
location. But MIT is not a region of the planet with unique circumstances.
Would a HackAfrica or HackOceania event having nothing to do with African or
pacific problems be appropriate?

~~~
VicVee
> Would a HackAfrica event having nothing to do with African problems be
> appropriate?

Yeah I would imagine that would just be a hackathon taking place in Africa.

Unfortunately, I think you're just causing a stink for no reason, and you're
not too familiar with the undergrad 'hacker' culture.

Take a look at these names and tell me which ones you don't like:
[https://mlh.io/seasons/f2015/events](https://mlh.io/seasons/f2015/events)

Something tells me it will be a lot of them.

~~~
sandworm101
Actually no. HackTheNorth is unique on that list. Every other one seems, to
me, accurate in terms of geography. All but a couple are named after the
unique place where they are being held. Those with regional descriptors
(Desert Hacks) seem accurate. But only the waterloo event uses both "Hack" as
a verb and addresses a region totally outside of its location. It is also the
only one to include "the", suggesting that the thought process behind the name
was slightly different.

~~~
VicVee
From now on I will no longer refer to Canada as the North.

I'll call Harper now and make sure the national anthem is also changed.

