Hac Boston

January 20-22, 2012

MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

About

The Haskell Hackathon is an international, grassroots collaborative coding festival with a simple focus: build and improve Haskell libraries, tools, and infrastructure.

Hac Boston will be held January 20-22, 2012 at MIT in Cambridge, MA. It is open to all -- you do not have to be a Haskell guru to attend. All you need is a basic knowledge of Haskell, a willingness to learn, and a project you're excited to help with (or a project of your own to work on).

There will be lots of hacking, some talks, good food, and, of course, fun!

• IRC channel: #haskell-hacboston (freenode)
• Mailing list: hackathon@haskell.org

Registration

If you will be attending, please register. Registration is free, and open to everyone. If you like, you can also list yourself as an attendee. Then check out the projects page.

When

January 20-22, 2012 from 2:30-10pm Friday, 9am-10pm Saturday, and 9am-5pm Sunday. There will probably be some talks Saturday afternoon.

Although the hackathon won't officially kick off until 2:30pm on Friday, you are welcome to arrive the evening of Thursday the 20th or Friday morning if it makes for easier travel. If enough people are around and interested, some sort of activity could be arranged for Thursday evening and/or Friday morning.

Talks

If you'd be interested in giving a short (15-20 minute) talk, put your name and the subject of your talk on the talks page. There will be a projector and whiteboard available.

Sponsors

Hac Boston 2012 is sponsored by Capital IQ, an active user of functional programming!

Location

Check out the Google map for info on relevant locations. More information about the room will be forthcoming.

Getting to the Boston area

See also Wikitravel.

Air

Logan International Airport (BOS) is the closest major airport. From BOS you can take the Silver Line SL1 bus to Boston South Station.

T. F. Green Airport (PVD) in Providence is another option, with a rail connection to Boston South Station.

Train

Amtrak serves Boston South Station, station code BOS. Service from cities in the Northeast is available on both the Northeast Regional train and the marginally faster Acela Express. These trains also stop at Boston Back Bay (BBY). South Station is the better choice if taking transit to MIT, but Back Bay is closer for walking.

From certain points in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, you can take MBTA commuter rail, which arrives at South Station or North Station.

Bus

Boston is served by many bus companies. From New York City, reasonable and cheap options include Megabus, BoltBus, Fung Wah, and Lucky Star.

Getting to MIT

By human power

Cambridge is a very walkable city. It is feasible to walk to MIT from many points in Cambridge, Boston, and Brookline. Cambridge is also very bikeable, but maybe not in January.

By public transit

MIT is close to Kendall Station on the Red Line subway. The Red Line connects to Boston South Station (and its rail and bus terminals) and the rest of the MBTA rapid transit network. MIT is also served by MBTA buses. Google Maps can plan rail and bus trips.

TODO: Add map and walking directions from Kendall, once location is finalized.

By car

TODO: someone who drives to MIT should add information on routes and parking.

Accommodation

We're still actively investigating what kinds of bulk deals we can get on hotels in the area.

There are a number of nearby hotels suggested on the MIT web site

There may also be some local residents willing to accommodate a few attendees. See the attendees page for more info.

Preparations

Before you arrive

• Pick out a couple of projects to work on and familiarise yourself with them, or bring your own project(s) to work on. See the projects page for a list of projects people plan to work on. If you plan to work on your own project, be sure to list it on the projects page and set up a public repository if you don't already have one, so that other people can help hack on your project.
• Install an up to date Haskell toolchain: at least ghc and cabal-install. If you don't already have these installed (or need to install from scratch on the laptop you're bringing), the easiest way is probably to install the Haskell Platform.

Contact

For any questions or emergencies, you can always call Edward Kmett at (857)244-1001.

Attendees

See the Attendees page.

Organization

The organizers of Hac Boston are:

• Edward Kmett (ekmett)
• Edward Yang (ezyang)