Wide-Reaching Tech Community Events
Our community events have brought thousands of people together. At the core, they are down-to-earth gatherings for developers and technologists. Where people connect with the -actual- tech & developer community and make friends, hear from quality people. Easy.
Events
2022
Unpretentious, laid-back events.
Supportive organizations help power our communities.
Grassroots-level visibility & brand recognition in communities comes hand-in-hand with a demonstration of socially responsible citizenship while engaging with others. Building on the natural curiosity of technologists with informal and tactful conversation, companies complement traditional outreach and talent search pipelines, meet and get to know regional talent before they even step into the (virtual) office for an interview, and spread the word about cool projects and initiatives they were working on.
“Feels like coming home” - Attendees Everywhere
Here’s the kinds of events we’ve produced to serve our community ecosystem: Low-pressure, high engagement productions that let people be themselves, connect with others, intermingle with sponsors and partners, share best practices and innovation trends, discuss tech & non-tech opportunities + more.
Public Tech Events >
200+ guests typically attend these general, skill-/experience- themed Tech Socials, SpeedMeets, career expos (up to 1,500+!), mentor/cofounder matching - they all help attendees connect with the ‘actual’ tech & developer community.
Curated Elite Meets >
Exclusively sponsored, single organization boutique events that curate specific, expert guests for an opportunity to come together to engage and connect in a low-pressure, casual manner while emphasizing the value of shared learning in engaging, informal settings.
Custom Events >
Tailored and exclusively sponsored, 15+ staffers (the more, the better) join us to host thematically and operationally customized events to reach specific geographies and skill & experience levels in sectors that align perfectly with a company’s interest.
We’ve spent over a decade helping people and organizations across the entire spectrum of our developer and startup communities.
Get in touch. sponsor@hackernest.com
We currently have capacity for producing a limited set of events. Let’s discuss ways you can engage. Our events have simple gives & gets and generally need 4-6 weeks to plan & produce. Hackathon-production advisory & coaching is bespoke and is thus ad-hoc based on client needs and our availability.
Techies: This is where community connects.
Align and make friends with smart, pleasant tech nerds. Easy. Tech Socials, SpeedMeets, career expos & fairs, mentor or cofounder matching, skill- or experience-themed socials, and other variations of our wholesome, community-centric events have common lineage - smart, nice people, passionate about supportive communities, and respectful. This is what we embody:
Supportive Community.
Pleasant tech & non-tech folk from all walks are welcome. A strict no-dirtbag policy means we attract genuinely friendly people who get you and are delighted to talk. Re-live what it's like to be human after 10+ hours of daily LCD tanning!
Learn By Connecting.
Advice. Guidance. Best practices. Get problem solving help from technologists (84.5%). We have tons of experts: 66.8% have 4+ years experience! 91% are employed, so get advice, intros, recommendations, insights, + more.
Discrimination-Free.
Our events are a Safe Space for nerds; you can relax, drop the image & any posturing, and just be yourself. Everyone’s chill and welcoming - just like family would be! Authentic interactions are a core of any community.
Career & Job Advice.
Insights & introductions from the 91% of gainfully employed guests. Learn about the world outside your bubble and figure out what to upskill on. 73.4% have formal tech training. Credible, experience-backed opinions matter.
Make Real Friends.
Have fun socializing and nerding-out with like-minded people. Connect with others & feeling the camaraderie. Join the 88.6% who had intelligent human social interaction and made real friends at HackerNest.
Startup Solidarity.
Hang with entrepreneurs, cofounders, ambitious startups, and growing empires with similar goals: validation, customers, recruiting, feedback, partnerships, etc. - and heck, who face similar hurdles and challenges too.
In-person feel, all online!
Moving online, our tech events emulate that special in-person vibe: There’s group video breakouts, 1-on-1 bursts of conversations, virtual expo booths, sometimes speakers on stage, and more. Almost like you’re actually there, floating in and out of conversations, going across to various parts of the event…
Some actual responses and typical experiences from guests:
“Found a job”
“Met my co-founder”
“Got help to solve my security assignment”
“Met some of my best friends in the industry”
“Got a job! Went on the slide at the Masonic temple!”
“Met unpretentious people who genuinely love what they do”
“It was amazing! Learned a lot from people, and everyone is super friendly!”
“You might as well ask Ovechkin if he likes scoring goals”
Toronto Deputy Mayor & Councillor Norm Kelly. Some know him as ‘6Dad’, others as just ‘Dad’. Protector of Toronto, friend of Drake, the guy that dissed Meek Mill. One time, he got awarded the city’s “most badass councillor” - many pictures were taken.
Who Shows Up to our events?
H4ck3rs. Hacks. Designerds. Data scienticians. Hardware engineerds. Developers. Venture ¢apitalist$. Venture communists. Entreprenerds. Killer robots. Sapiophiles. Social mediaphiles. Cloud network architects. Writers. Machine learning cyborgs. Artificially intelligent product managers. Accomplices.
The Vibe: Notoriously down-to-earth, relaxed, unpretentious and laid-back.
The People: Nice, friendly, supportive, and always up to chatting!
Tech Socials & our other 'superconnector' events brought techies together at cool offices for drinks, food, and great conversation on weeknights in cities around the world.
We've helped a range of fullstack, data science, STEMmies, engineers, and marketing/strategy folk connect to founders, startups, and high-growth companies.
We've filled offices and auditoriums with public-facing hackathons that were carefully crafted to dig deep into exploring problems & solutions for myriad causes and sustainable development goals.
HackerNest events bring our tech fam together.
“At HackerNest Tech Socials, you can have open and honest discussion with anyone without having to worry about their motives. We often drift from technical topics and end up discussing the personal thoughts and feelings that are on the minds of the community. You don't get that elsewhere. HackerNest fills that niche missing from all the other tech events. I'm enamored by the work that you guys do. You’re doing an excellent job at fulfilling your mission. ”
— Michael; Tech Social attendee
“was really interesting to visit #hackernest yesterday as a volunteer and meet some real interesting fellow web developers. Definitely some ideas on how to progress my career!”
— Carl; Tech Social Attendee
“It was terrific! So many wonderful people, I’ve learned a real lot just by talking to them briefly, so many bright minds”
— Anthony; Tech Social Attendee
Backstory: The evolution of our events.
For a decade leading up to the covid-19 pandemic of 2020, HackerNest produced a great number of in-person events across Canada, the United States, and internationally - We’ve brought events to over 68 cities, a very long way from the first Tech Social, an event series born from a need to have non-salesy events in the community for like-minded folk to meet without being pitched at constantly!
Supported by Ecosystem Organizations
In each of the dozens of local communities we helped foster, our Tech Socials, hackathons, expos, and other events had the privilege of being hosted at startups, medium-to-larger companies, government city halls, consulates, institutes, universities & colleges, galleries, and even some neat rooftop & outdoor patios. Super grateful for the amount of ongoing ecosystem support and glad to have been able to serve our communities this way.
Powered by Volunteers
Our local Organizers and their teams of event volunteers planned and produced events that kept bringing more techies together. Using the blueprint from our early events - unpretentious, laid-back, agenda-free (+ food & drinks on the house) - we’ve run over 1,250 localized events in cities around the world. Movements are as strong as the people that support it - and this one is no different. So appreciative to have worked tirelessly alongside this great group of people.
We’ve produced epic projects with some of the world’s biggest and coolest brands in dozens of countries over the past decade. Cause hackathons, internal innovation hackathons, tech career events, large recruiting expos & curated talent events, brainstorming, restructuring, roundtables, councils, research, focus groups. It’s all been fun. Facebook, Amazon, Deloitte, Dove, Cisco, RBC, Tangerine, CAPCO, PwC, Grindr, the UK, US, and Canadian governments, the White House and dozens of embassies & consulates, the National Center for State Courts, law firms, and many others. Here’s some companies that have hosted, sponsored, and partnered with us:
+ many others. Thank you all for your support in our mission to unite tech communities.