Don’t put your Hacker food in a glass room.
600 Nature Valley Bars. 400 Starbucks Frappuccinos. 150 Cases of Redbull. Hosting ~1100 awesome hackers for 36 hours requires massive inventory. It took a total of five trips to Costco, (three of which had 3 SUVs full of food), and lots of looks from Costco employees to gather enough food for MHacks IV.
If we put all of the food out at once, it would be gone in 5 minutes.
Instead, we stored the food that we regularly put out ever hour in our Operations room, affectionately known as the MHacks Ops center. We chose to put the Ops center in that room because it was glass-enclosed, and would give us a good view of what is happening at MHacks.
However, its a horrible place to store food.
Hackers saw MHacks organizers sitting next to tables filled with enormous quantities of food. Hackers repeatedly knocked on the door asking for food, which put us in a incredibly awkward position to deny their request.
Let’s be clear— I wanted to give them food—the food is for them!— but if I gave one hacker food, the Ops center would be raided as fast as word can spread with internet-connected hackers.
TL;DR: Quietly store your food in a spot only you can find it, and keep Hacker food areas stocked regularly. You’re not providing food as a kind gesture— its expected of a hackathon organizer, and makes saying ‘no’ feel so wrong.
