---
title: 2016-17 School Year Hack Club Summary
author: Mingjie Jiang
date: 2017-05-31T00:34:00+00:00
tags:
  - club
shortLink: 'links.mingjie.info/20161cc7be'

---
<div class="kg-card-markdown">
  <p>
    That concludes the first half year of Wootton Hack Club. Now looking back at where we have started, it seems like there are things we have expected to achieve but did not achieve, but there are also things that we have unexpectedly achieved.
  </p>
  
  <p>
    As the president of the club, I&#8217;m proud to present to you, wheather you are already a member of the club or not, the club&#8217;s summary of 2016-2017.
  </p>
  
  <p>
    We&#8217;ll start this off by a few recognized supporters/leaders: Thanks to <strong>Joey Kim</strong> from Montgomery Blair High School, who had offered help during the first stages of the club &#8211; though you could not continue to work on our Blair branch, you will always be welcomed to join any of our social events; to <strong>Matthew Yu</strong>, who served as the vice president of the club and worked on various important documents during the foundation of the club; to <strong>Larissa Tsai</strong>, for offering help organizing social events and leading our CTF feeder team; to <strong>Konstantin Tomashevsky</strong>, who contributed to our CTF teams more than anyone else did; to <strong>Aman Thanvi</strong>, who worked hard to maintain the public figure of the club&#8230;
  </p>
  
  <p>
    And also, thanks to <strong>Ms. Silcox</strong>, who will be our sponsor for next year.
  </p>
  
  <p>
    Back in January, <strong>my goal was not to create a regular programming club</strong>, but rather a community of skilled programmers at school. But after I got the invitation from Hack Club, I started to realize <strong>how important it was to get people started with programming</strong>. We had to admit that programming is a time and money consuming path, and it was hard to get started with. But <strong>we cannot let people give up their interests or their dreams</strong> just because they did not have the opportunity to attend a programming class, or buy a certain software.
  </p>
  
  <p>
    That&#8217;s why we provided our members with almost everything they needed, and that&#8217;s why <strong>perks became one of our first goals to achieve</strong>.
  </p>
  
  <p>
    Hack Club organization members and leaders helped to ensure a lot of benefits for us, and we also got a bunch for ourselves. Thanks to the following companies for their contribution:
  </p>
  
  <ul>
    <li>
      <a href="https://hackclub.com/?ref=wootton-hack-club">Hack Club</a> from California, along with their sponsors <ul>
        <li>
          <a href="https://get.tech/?ref=wootton-hack-club"><code>.tech</code> Domains</a>
        </li>
        <li>
          <a href="https://codeday.com/?ref=wootton-hack-club">CodeDay</a> (from <a href="https://srnd.org/?ref=wootton-hack-club">StudentRND</a>)
        </li>
      </ul>
    </li>
    
    <li>
      <a href="https://digitalocean.com/?ref=wootton-hack-club">DigitalOcean</a>, supporting us since January 2017
    </li>
    <li>
      <a href="https://jetbrains.com/?ref=wootton-hack-club">JetBrains</a>, supporting us since April 2017
    </li>
    <li>
      <a href="https://notion.so/?ref=wootton-hack-club">Notion.so</a>, supporting us since May 2017
    </li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>
    We wanted our members to <strong>collaborate</strong>, to <strong>share</strong>, to create something that they will be proud of. That&#8217;s why we assigned our members a summer project to work on, which can literally be <strong>anything that they wanted to build</strong>. We&#8217;ve got ideas of apps, websites, games from members of various skill levels. I wanted programming to be <strong>free</strong>, not just sitting in a classroom listening to boring lectures and taking notes. If there&#8217;s something online that you can learn completely by yourself, that has to be programming.
  </p>
  
  <p>
    So hey, what&#8217;s next?
  </p>
  
  <p>
    Next year, we are going to start working right when the school year starts. We are going to get more members; we are going to sell t-shirts, giveaway more stickers; we are going to get everyone on track building their own dream projects; we are going to invite guest speakers to the school; host competitions; post flyers; build relationships with more inspiring companies; share the spirit of the real hackers; and most importantly, replicate the hacker culture and redefine hack&#8230;
  </p>
  
  <p>
    Follow us on <a href="https://twitter.com/MDHackClub/?ref=wootton-hack-club">Twitter</a> and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/mdhackclub/?ref=wootton-hack-club">Facebook</a> with the handle @MDHackClub.
  </p>
  
  <p>
    Have a great summer, we&#8217;ll see you next year.
  </p>
</div>