Build a Tech Community in Your Neighborhood, One Hackathon at a Time

The talk covers how a volunteer group in Flushing, Queens, built a local tech community using two-hour mini-hackathons held every two weeks. The speaker explains that earlier formats such as networking nights, happy hours and talks faded quickly, while hands-on building kept people coming back. A typical session opens with introductions, moves into rapid idea generation, forms small groups around the strongest ideas, works for about an hour and a half, then ends with short presentations and informal networking.

After roughly eighteen months, the group reported about 700 Meetup members, a Discord with around 100 people, roughly ten attendees per session, 38 hackathons and about 140 projects. The speaker walked through a three-phase launch roadmap: initialise the group in the first month, add supporting events and volunteer roles over the following few months, then pursue local business and nonprofit partnerships. Templates for agendas, emails, event listings and social posts, along with a voting tool for ideas, are published openly as a manifesto. Venues were found by asking public spaces such as libraries, community centers and a college, with local representatives suggested as useful contacts.

In the question period, the speaker described governance as based on trust, acknowledged that a written code of conduct was still missing, and explained why a single neighborhood makes a practical scope. Meetup drew most new attendees, while social media mainly helped keep existing members engaged. The main takeaway is to start small, expect early failures, and run a first hackathon to get going.