Hack Bristol
Hack Bristol was a two day event where small teams competed to build
cool technology projects. It was an open source hackstravaganza, and a
fun two days. Almost every team that attempted a project were able to
show a (nearly) working prototype at the end of the day. We're going to
put as many of the hacks onto hackbristol.com as soon as
they're a bit more polished, so the open source can benefit from our
teams' hard work. I'll also be posting each of the hacks here on my blog, so look out for them. Thanks to everyone that attended!
Hack Bristol wouldn't have been possible without contributions from Sun (David Levy and pizzas, what more could we ask for?), XMOS (XMOS staff, XC-1 boards, and XDKs), Distribution Technology, Research Machines, and Compass Computer Consultants (Prizes and Food). Thanks to all of our sponsors!
Thanks also to Jason Mayes for use of his photos, plundered recklessly from xlinkers.org, specifically his first and second posts on Hack Bristol.
More pictures and details after the jump.
We started the first day near 11 AM with a brief opening address by David Levy and myself, and then let the teams off to work. They spread themselves out along the building and in the computer labs. During the day I walked around and checked in with groups to see how they were doing. Overall, the tone was very positive. The teams worked hard all day, stopping only for the pizza delivery at five. We left MVB at nine PM that night, with many of the teams having made great progress. Everyone seemed to be in high spirits, and confident their hacks would be working by the following evening.
The second day started a bit later, as the teams trickled back into the Merchant Venturer's Building. By three o'clock, the pizza had arrived again, and again there was much rejoicing. David Levy gave his keynote at about twenty minutes past four, due to a delay in getting into the presentation room. We then had a few minutes for the teams to get ready for their demos. Fueled by Tesco's finest and Domino's Pizza, the teams worked right up to the wire to get their hacks working. When the demos rolled around, all teams but one were ready to produce their (mostly) working projects. 
There were a lot of great ones, but eventually BlueBrother's bluetooth tracking system, a face-recognition system (don't have the groupname, sorry), UWE's XMOS/Arduino RC cars, and an XMOS DDR clone were deemed the winners. The two XMOS groups were given their XC-1s to continue hacking with, while the two software groups were given 50 pounds each.
It was a fun event, but there was definitely room for improvement -- this'll be the topic of a later post. Thanks again to everyone to participated, helped organise, and funded the event. We love you guys, and we can't wait for Hack Bristol 2 sometime next (academic) year!
