I’m going to start hacking at mLab

I remember when I went to my first hackathon in 2013 — I was hooked. It truly changed my life. It’s how I got interested in coding and how I met my best friends, Joe, Syeef, and Bil. In 2014, we teamed up with Swift and Jon from Major League Hacking (MLH) to spread hackathons across Europe. In three years we’ve accomplished more than we could ever have imagined. But the time has come for me to work on a new challenge and this is my last week at MLH. I’m excited to announce that I’ll be joining mLab as a Developer Advocate.

I’m really proud of all the things I’ve been able to do at MLH. Here are just some of the highlights:

• We launched MLH in the UK, building a community of 2,000 students around hackathons. We organized LaunchHack which inspired dozens of people to start hackathons!
• In 2015 we expanded to mainland Europe and grew the community to 5,000 students. I’m so proud of how well the communities in UPC, Jacobs, and the University of Ljubljana (to name a few) have grown!
• In 2015 I also joined the leadership team to help manage the company. I learned so much about leadership and how to grow a startup.
• We organized events like LaunchHack, LandingHack, Hackcon, Hackcon EU, Local Hack Day, and MLH Prime. Each one of those were so much fun to be a part of.
• We supported events which aimed to improve inclusivity in tech such as WIT conference, WIL conference, TechNight London, and NYCWiC.
• At the start of 2016 I became the Commissioner for both North America and Europe. I worked with the amazing Shy and Carl to provide more support to hackathons.
• MLH now supports 250 events a year attended by 65,000 students! With initiatives like MLH Localhost, it’s set up to have a huge impact on CS education for years to come.

It has been an amazing three years but I’m hyped to start my new chapter at mLab! mLab powers over half a million MongoDB deployments on AWS, Azure, and Google. It’s trusted by companies such as Lyft, The New York Times, and FOX. I’m planning on moving to San Francisco in May (all pending my visa being granted). I’m going to continue helping hackers level up their skills and I’m excited to help developers create awesome applications using mLab.

MLH has been a fantastic place to work and the people here are amazing. They truly care for hackers all over the world and are going to do great things in the future. We have been interviewing for a new Commissioner in NYC and I couldn’t recommend MLH enough. For the time being, Nick Quinlan (nq@mlh.io) will be the acting Commissioner. You can always email league@mlh.io if you need anything.

Happy Hacking!