SuperHappyDevHouse - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

SuperHappyDevHouse is an international series of social events which organizers originally conceived as parties for hackers and thinkers. Founded May 29, 2005 by Jeff Lindsay and David Weekly (founder of PBwiki

PBwiki

PBworks is a commercial real-time collaborative editing system created by David Weekly, with Ramit Sethi and Nathan Schmidt joining shortly thereafter as co-founders. Based in San Mateo, California, the company's original name stems from their belief that "making a wiki is as easy as making a...

), SHDH in Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley is a term which refers to the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California in the United States. The region is home to many of the world's largest technology corporations...

began by hosting 150 to 200 people every six weeks at rotating venues throughout San Francisco Bay

San Francisco Bay

San Francisco Bay is a shallow, productive estuary through which water draining from approximately forty percent of California, flowing in the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers from the Sierra Nevada mountains, enters the Pacific Ocean...

and Silicon Valley, California. The unusual name derived from a popular 1991 Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live is a live American late-night television sketch comedy and variety show developed by Lorne Michaels and Dick Ebersol. The show premiered on NBC on October 11, 1975, under the original title of NBC's Saturday Night.The show's sketches often parody contemporary American culture...

satire, Happy Fun Ball

Happy Fun Ball

The "Happy Fun Ball" was the subject of a parody advertisement on Saturday Night Live. It originally aired February 16, 1991 on NBC and was brought back for several repeats...

, which lampooned TV commercials and the NERF Ball

Nerf

Nerf is a toy brand created by Parker Brothers and currently owned by Hasbro. The acronym NERF stands for "Non-Expanding Recreational Foam". Most of the toys are a variety of foam-based weaponry, but there are also several different types of Nerf toys, such as balls for sports like football,...

. Weekly lived in a house nicknamed "SuperHappyFunHouse" after SNL's commercial parody, and that name was given yet another twist as SuperHappyDevHouse.

Global expansion

By 2008, SHDH had expanded globally with CocoaDevHouse (London); SuperHappyDevClub (Cambridge, UK); Cologne DevHouse (Cologne, Germany); SuperHappyDevFlat (Zurich, Switzerland); SuperHappyGrow-OpDevHouse (Vancouver, Canada); SuperHappyDevHouse Aotearoa (New Zealand); PhoenixDevHouse (Arizona); BostonDevHouse (Cambridge, Massachusetts); and DevHouse Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania). There was a DevHouse in Hermosillo, Mexico in September 2008, marking the first Latin American DevHouse, followed shortly thereafter by a Mexico City DevHouse on November 1, 2008 and 2 years later by a Dev House on Merida, Mexico on February 28, 2010.

People, whether technical or creative, gather at a private home for not-so-serious productivity and socialization. Organizers say they're trying to "resurrect the spirit of the Homebrew Computer Club

Homebrew Computer Club

The Homebrew Computer Club was an early computer hobbyist users' group in Silicon Valley, which met from March 5, 1975 to December 1986...

." It's a non-exclusive event intended for passionate and creative technical people that want to have some fun, learn new things, and meet new people. There is no admission charged; the event is paid for by donations and sponsorships.

The lifecaster

Lifecasting (video stream)

Lifecasting is a continual broadcast of events in a person's life through digital media. Typically, lifecasting is transmitted through the medium of the Internet and can involve wearable technology...

and tech journalist Sarah Austin described the goals of SuperHappyDevHouse while comparing it to the Homebrew Computer Club:

I started attending SuperHappyDevHouse last year because I wanted to meet other people who are just as fascinated with technology as I am. It’s a place where young people collaborate to get our work done and do it together. It was started by my new friend David Weekly, founder of PB Wiki, in the spirit to bring back the Homebrew Computer Club in Silicon Valley. The club consists of mostly males, although the number of females is growing, and everyone seems to be either an engineer or a designer. At SuperHappyDevHouse we are driven to create because we want to help humanity and empower people. Just as every member to SuperHappyDevHouse comes from a different background, we come together for a common purpose. That’s what we want to do for others- we want to enable them to come together for a common purpose to help humanity. We see different parts of technology as different elements that come together to create a key that will unlock a door that will change the world.

The original SHDH was in Hillsborough, California

Hillsborough, California

Hillsborough is an incorporated town in San Mateo County, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area. Hillsborough is one of the wealthiest communities in America and has the highest income of places in the United States with populations of at least 10,000...

and later in Los Gatos, California

Los Gatos, California

The Town of Los Gatos is an incorporated town in Santa Clara County, California, United States. The population was 29,413 at the 2010 census. It is located in the San Francisco Bay Area at the southwest corner of San Jose in the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains...

.

As of August 2009, SHDH spawned HackerDojo

HackerDojo

Hacker Dojo is a community center and hackerspace in Mountain View, California. Predominantly an open working space for software projects, the Dojo hosts a range of events from technology classes to biology, computer hardware, and manufacturing and is open to all types of hackers.- Organization...

to operate a Hackerspace

Hackerspace

A hackerspace or hackspace is a location where people with common interests, often in computers, technology, science, or digital or electronic art can meet, socialise and/or collaborate...

in Mountain View, CA to allow for 24/7 programming, hackathons, classes, workshops, and lectures. SHDH now operates as an activity of Hacker Dojo Corporation.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Global expansion

See also

External links