Science Hack Day SF 2019 – our 10th annual event!

Last year the SF event marked our 100th Science Hack Day event globally, and this year we were beyond psyched to host our 10th annual Science Hack Day San Francisco! This year we welcomed 225 science hackers! Each year has been filled with so much joy, positivity, and creativity and this year was no exception. Thank you to all of you for participating in making science a more friendly and inclusive space!

The Hacks
You can browse through all the hacks that were created over the weekend (the page also notes who received the coveted SCIENCE medals for each category!).

The Event
This was our fifth year being hosted in GitHub’s incredible space. Co-organizer Dawn Ho did an amazing job again this year setting up a hardware corner full of fun tools. On Saturday night, we had a video call with the science hackers at Science Hack Day India (in Belgaum) that was taking place the same weekend. We took turns doing show-and-tell of what people were working on between San Francisco and Belgaum. Despite the fog, we also had a telescope viewing on the roof with a ukulele musical accompaniment by organizer Jun Axup. On Sunday, we woke up to a waffle bar and watching the 2019 Apollo 11 documentary, before getting a direct video feed to Antarctica! The video feed featured an underwater camera known as the McMurdo Oceanographic Observatory that showed a live view of the seafloor. Somehow with all that, everyone still managed to fit some quality hacking time in!

Photos + Videos
Per usual, Matt Biddulph, our resident photographer and co-organizer, added a great set of photos on Flickr for your viewing pleasure, released under a Creative Commons license. Scroll down further on this post to see just a small sampling of some of the photos that we love from Matt’s collection this year!

If you missed part of the Saturday morning talks or Sunday afternoon demos of everyone’s hacks, we’ve got the videos archived here:
• Saturday Talks (introduction to Science Hack Day, main stage lightning talks, 42-second lightning pitches)
• Sunday Demos (hack demos, award ceremony)

We also made an album of all the wonderful postcards you wrote for our postcard wall.

Thank You
Thank you to our sponsors GitHub and Important Not Important, as well as our in-kind partner Otaku Patrol Group, and White Coat Captioning’s awesome service. We absolutely would not be able to have events like this without their support. They help make awesome things happen in the world and you should take a minute to see what they’re up to.

Hugs and many thanks to the Science Hack Day SF team: Dawn Ho, Jun Axup, Matt Biddulph, and Ramon Simms, along with epic help from Drew Woods, AJ Jimenez, Kiiana Garcia, and the security staff from GitHub. Thanks also so much to Ben Ward and our many friends who volunteered a few shifts over the weekend. Creating this event is a huge team effort and many of us are balancing it while navigating startup life, full time jobs, or other large endeavors. Our team of on-the-day volunteers are truly wonderful friends of ours – giving up some of their personal time to help make the event run smoothly!

Thanks also to all who gave lightning talks, donated cool hardware, offered inspiration, or provided amazing activities (thanks, Franck Marchis and Aaron White for the telescopes!) for everyone to enjoy. And THANK YOU to everyone who attended for making Science Hack Day what it is!

As mentioned, there will be no Science Hack Day SF in 2020, but if/when there are future events we will be sure to let you know. In the meantime, please feel free to email us anytime with updates or stories from your experience at Science Hack Day SF.

– Ariel Waldman, lead organizer of Science Hack Day SF