We started “Fuck it, Ship it” with the goal of bringing together and promoting Michigan’s hacker community. We wanted to keep the community going between hackathons, wanted to get people working on projects so much cooler than school assignments, learning things you can’t learn in school. I wanted to meet the people starting companies, working on crazy ideas, pushing the limits, dropping out.

We had no idea where to start, even the names we started with were laughably bad. We got a lot of tips from Dave Fontenot and Mike Swift, and one of the key insights was that we needed to go after the heroes of the hacker community, the champions that others look up to. If we got them to come, the rest would follow. So that’s what we did, we personally reached out to 30–50 of the most active hackers in the community, sending them messages like this:

We’re bringing all the hackers, makers, doers, everyone who wants to build cool things together in an awesome space at the Creator’s Co-op this Thursday and we want you to come. At 9 we’ll have a keg and pizza to meet people and talk about ideas, then we’ll break off into smaller groups to work on our projects. Basically, we want the people who ship their products often to get together and build together. Is this something you’d come to?

Everybody we reached out to said yes, and all of them showed up.
And when they hit “attending” on Facebook, others followed suit. The first event was a crazy success, bringing in around 100 people. It wasn’t just hackers that came out too, the guy I still remember is Darren from Berry Logistics, (http://www.berrylogistics.com/) a mechanical engineering startup that blew my mind.

There’s acquisition, but how do you get people to come back?
The thing is, you can get 150 hackers together for the most epic of hack nights, but 30 will come to the next one if you don’t keep offering more. Fuck it, Ship it holds loads of value for everybody that comes. Network with the best hackers at the school, get help building or starting projects, find connections to companies for jobs. It’s a really awesome hacking space and even beer for those of age, but only the most dedicated hackers are going to come for that.

So to offer more we started holding workshops and talks. We found early though that big workshops didn’t work well. It was very difficult to find topics that interested many people, and as a result people would quickly lose interest in the workshop in favor of the projects they brought. So instead, we do more things targeted at smaller audiences that work much better.

We wanted to help get people with little experience started on their own projects, but the beginners that would come often didn’t find things to work on and would simply leave. During the event, it’s critical that you talk to as many people as possible, figure out what they’re looking for and help them get going. You have to make sure the right conversations are happening so that the right people can meet each other and build something great. In addition, it’s an awesome feeling to get the right people together and just watch the awesome happen.

In the end, it’s a lot of little things that can get people around and make for a really successful hack night: special food like Insomnia cookies, Chipotle burritos, a home automation workshop for even a few kids, having cool toys like Google Glass or Myos around to play with. Things like that broaden the offering and help peak the interest of more people.

The final part is sponsorship. We needed someone to cover costs of pizza and drinks, so we initially went after a bunch of local startups offering the opportunity to meet the best talent pool of hackers at Michigan. We also went nuts giving out stickers at hackathons, and it really helped spread get the attention of the companies that are already sending evangelists out to hacker events. We realized those companies were the best leads for sponsorship, and a lot of companies we reached out to had already heard a about Fuck it, Ship it and were interested in getting involved.

So this is Fuck it, Ship it now. We’re always looking for new ways to push the boundaries and offer more, but I couldn’t be happier with how it has all turned out.