HacKid Conference - Boston

Kids are our future, why not give them that spark that will set them on a journey that only “hacking” can inspire?

HacKid was created to educate, stimulate and develop children and adults in a variety of educational areas in order to raise awareness and understanding of technology, mathematics and engineering and the impact on society and culture.

The gist of the idea for HacKid (sounds like... [read more]

Kids are our future, why not give them that spark that will set them on a journey that only “hacking” can inspire?

HacKid was created to educate, stimulate and develop children and adults in a variety of educational areas in order to raise awareness and understanding of technology, mathematics and engineering and the impact on society and culture.

The gist of the idea for HacKid (sounds like “hacked,” get it?) came about when I took my three daughters aged 6, 9 and 14 along with me to the Source Security conference in Boston.

It was fantastic to have them engage with my friends, colleagues and audience members as well as ask all sorts of interesting questions regarding the conference.

It was especially gratifying to have them in the audience when I spoke twice. There were times the iPad I gave them was more interesting, however. ;)

The idea really revolves around providing an interactive, hands-on experience for kids and their parents which includes things like:

Low-impact martial arts/self-defense training
Online safety (kids and parents!)
How to deal with CyberBullies
Gaming competitions
Introduction to Programming
Basic to advanced network/application security
Hacking hardware and software for fun
Build a netbook
Make a podcast/vodcast
Physical Security
Interactive robot building (Lego Mindstorms?)
Organic snacks and lunches
Website design/introduction to blogging
Meet law enforcement
Meet *real* security researchers ;)

If you have additional ideas for cool things to do, let us know via @HacKidCon (Twitter) hackid@hackid.org or better yet, PLEASE go to the Wiki and contribute there!


Boston Area HacKid
The Boston Area HacKid is now scheduled for October 9th and 10th and coincides with National CyberSecurity Awareness Month*

We've secured an amazing venue in Cambridge, MA thanks to the generous offerings of Microsoft! The first HacKidCon will take place at the fantastic
Microsoft New England Research & Development (NERD) Center which is a research and software innovation campus located in the heart of Cambridge, Massachusetts at
One Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA 02142.

This campus is home to Microsoft Research New England, Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V), Future Social Experiences (FUSE) Labs, Microsoft Technical
Computing and other product teams from across Microsoft. You can find out more by visiting www.MicrosoftCambridge.com.
Now that the venue is secure, the advisory board will start to kick into high gear to make this one amazing event!

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