AngelHack: Coming to a City Near You | Net Impact

AngelHack is going on tour around the world. 

AngelHack is the world’s largest and most diverse global hacker community, helping to drive open innovation of tech products, platforms, and brands.

At Net Impact, we like to highlight inspiring organizations leading change around the world and this definitely describes AngelHack. We have created a two-part blog series profiling this innovative company. Read on to learn about hackathons and how you can get involved to make an impact yourself. 

Hacking to improve the world

First let’s explain what hackathons are. Hackathons are when developers, designers, and entrepreneurs compete to build, test, and launch new solutions over the course of a weekend. AngelHack is known as the “pioneers of global hackathons.” Now AngelHack is embarking on its 10th Global Hackathon Series and going on tour around the world with stops in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, the U.S, Australia, and more. 

Past themes for their Global Hackathon Series’ include, The Whole Developer, Thoughts Become Things, and Anyone Can Code. This year, AngelHack is presenting their new theme: Commit To Your Code.

“Now, more than ever we want to encourage entrepreneurs commit to their code and in turn commit to the projects they create, the team they create it with, themselves, and the prospect of making a positive impact on the world,” says the AngelHack team.

Each hackathon begins with a Fresh Code, where everyone starts coding at the same time. Teams have full ownership of everything they build at the events and are free to proceed with it as they wish. Projects are submitted online and participants must demo and present their hacks. The grand prize for the competition is an exclusive invite to AngelHack’s HACKcelerator, including a 12-week curriculum to turn their hackathon ideas into a startup reality.

AngelHack is activating a community of innovators to improve the world. An example is a project from their Lady Problems Hackathon series that focused on tackling imposter syndrome in the workplace.

Imposter syndrome is an exhausting and inhibiting condition where individuals are marked by an inability to internalize their accomplishments and a persistent fear of being exposed as a "fraud.” Alisia Stasi was still suffering with the condition when she bravely applied for AngelHack’s Lady Problems Hackathon series in London. She ended up winning the competition with an app that integrates cognitive behavioral therapy with studies on impostor syndrome and gives a daily reminder to help keep the impostor at bay and boost confidence. 

“It’s exciting to see the tech sector, including engineers and developers, getting more engaged in leveraging their skills for good. We’re seeing an increasing interesting in attending hackathons, volunteering their time to support nonprofits, and contributing to open source projects focused on social impact,” says Rachel Katz, the Director of Social Innovation at AngelHack. 

“It’s our goal to continue to encourage this behavior and help bridge the gap between nonprofits, social entrepreneurs and technologists.” 

Are you feeling inspired to attend a hackathon? Find a city near you.

Stay tuned for part 2 in our blog series where we share how AngelHack integrates social good into their hackathons and their advice to aspiring entrepreneurs.