Yesterday was my 46th birthday. How did I spend it? Well, 20 “Hackers” from 9 schools, 4 student TAs and a few of us teachers gathered at SumAll to kick off CSTUY’s first weekly program - Hacking Sessions (sometimes called Hackers Sessions).

It was the first week so it was mostly mixers, setting up machines (installing Linux on 24 laptops takes time) and going over how we’ll be communicating but I’m really excited about the weeks to come. We all expect to hit the ground running this coming Saturday.

It’s easy for a Stuyvesant student to become part of the Stuy CS family. Most students at other schools aren’t lucky enough to have that type of critical mass. Typically they’re one of a few techie students and if they’re lucky there will be maybe one teacher who’s really knowledgeable and passionate about CS and tech in general.

We’re hoping that this is going to change that. These 20 hackers represent the start of a community for student hackers – taking what we’ve developed at Stuy outside the confines of the school.

Special thanks to Davin and everyone at SumAll for providing not only space but an amazingly welcoming and friendly environment and also Fanming for coming up with the laptops.