Matthew Stanciu This is the second edition of the Purdue Hackers VIP newsletter that I sent this to ~70 alumni, faculty, and sponsors. If you want to be included in future editions, email me or DM me on Discord and I’ll add you to the list.
Hi there!
I’m Matthew, the President of Purdue Hackers. You’re receiving this email because you’re someone we want to stay in touch with. This is the second edition of the Purdue Hackers VIP Newsletter, where we share what our students are up to every month. ✨
Read the first edition here. Like the first edition, we’ve intentionally cast a wide net; if you don’t want to receive these, use this link to unsubscribe.
🌸 Wrapping Spring ‘24
After the first edition of this newsletter, Purdue Hackers finished the Spring 2024 semester strong:
- Steve Wozniak joined us for an AMA.
- We raised nearly $2,000 from a mix of Paul Graham, cold emails, and folks who donated after reading the first edition. If you donated, thank you so much. 💛
- 70 people assembled their NFC-enabled Republic of Hackerland passport at biweekly passport-making ceremonies.
🍏 Hack Night 5.0
We kicked off the Fall 2024 semester with a new major version of Hack Night. 100 people joined us at Hack Night 5.0 on August 31st to build some wild projects—including a mushroom computer 🍄
Hack Night 5.0 introduced 🚩Checkpoints: after the countdown to 0~0~0, we demo things we’re working on. Unlike hackathon demos, Checkpoints are intended to be scrappy works-in-progress, not finished projects. This week, folks shared some of the things they’ve built recently—including a programmable computer made from NAND gates (which hit #1 on Hacker News), an indie game where you’re an alien serving boba, and a hacker’s first-ever PCB design.
You know the feeling you get when you lost something you had, like you didn’t realize what you had until you lost it? Checkpoints are like that but the opposite: we’ve gained what was missing from Hack Night.
— Ishan Goel, Hack Night regular since Fall 2023
🧡Cloudflare is buying us pizza for our first four Hack Nights; in exchange, each of these Hack Nights is themed around one of their products. Hack Night 5.0 was all about Cloudflare Workers. Thank you, Cloudflare!
View a recap of Hack Night 5.0 + Hack Night 5.1
🖼 The Show
Hackers are making incredible things, but currently have no place to show their work outside of Hack Night. Starting this December, we’re running the Show, an event for hackers to share the projects they made at Hack Night with 300+ students, faculty, and sponsors.
The Show runs at the end of every semester. Each iteration has a unique name and brand, shaped by its featured projects. The Fall 2024 Show will take the form of an art gallery opening, including a mix of table demos and wall installations of student projects, and will take place in an actual gallery on campus.
You are invited to join us at the Fall 2024 Show. We’ll share more as we confirm a venue & date, but it will take place on the afternoon of either December 7th or 8th.
🪐 Galactic Empire
Purdue Hackers has radically transformed over the past two years. I am so proud of this transformation, which has raised the technical ambitions of hundreds of students—but such rapid & intense periods of growth are often built on weak foundations, and risk collapsing after their generation moves on.
2025 will mark the first year most members core to Purdue Hackers’ recent transformation will graduate, including me. I wrote about how we plan to ensure Purdue Hackers remains vibrant for the next 2, 10, and 100 years—starting this Fall.
🚢 Featured Ships
- ETea: an indie game where you’re an alien serving boba by @jaddenki and @saahilaneja.
- NAND: an entire independent computing stack built on top of NAND gates by @ArhanChaudhary.
- Nix-Minecraft: a framework by @Infinidoge that enhances Minecraft content support within the Nix ecosystem, which was recently featured on YouTube.
- Scribe: a website by @imthesquid that lets you layout and preview variations of an isometric font created by @okaibee.
- Implementing === in JavaScript from Scratch by @ArhanChaudhary.
📣 Our Asks
- If you’re an alum or individual: Please consider covering pizza for our next Hack Night. Food is our largest expense & covering it allows us to fund more student projects. We spend $200 per Hack Night, but anything helps.
- If you represent a company: We would love to run an event with you this semester, e.g. career building or tech talk, as well as get you in front of our students at the Fall 2024 Show. Please reach out if you’re interested!
- If you’re Purdue faculty: We’re looking to add two designers to the team, to work on our new club brand, Hack Night badges, and branding for the Fall 2024 Show. Please send any leads our way!
For everyone: please reply to this email with feedback on this newsletter. I want to make this something you’re excited to read every month, and I welcome your suggestions for how we can make it better.
With 💛,
Matthew