Hack Day London displeases God

Author: Joe Martin
Published: 20th June 2007

Hack Day London was held in the massive Alexandra Palace, but was almost spoiled by storms.

Hack Day London must have done something to displease the Gods (perhaps featuring a church in a videogame?) recently as the whole event was almost spoiled by rain on Saturday, despite being indoors.

Apparently the event, which took place inside Alexandra Palace in London, was disrupted during a storm when lightning came down and fried the controls for the skylights, opening them all in the process and letting the downpour in.

Geeks aren't that easily discouraged though and hundreds of programmers resorted to whiteboards and actual communication in order to continue work, all the while holding umbrellas over their laptops.

Having also lost the WiFi connection, attendees of the two-night event created a local network and set their efforts towards building 'web mashups' on a smaller scale.

Hack Day London, hosted by the BBC and Yahoo! is similar to the Developer Day hosted by Google, which tries to bring together like-minded developers for some fun and social networking. Hack Day London drew over 500 attendees, much more than the Oxford Geek Night or London 2.0.

"This is easily the largest developer event in the city," BBC representatives told Wired.com. "It's really happening, it's a great social scene, bunches of dedicated guys get together."

Did you attend Hack Day, or have you attended something similar in the past? Trade tales, swap stories and just generally let us know about your experiences in the forums.