Have you always wanted a hacker of your very own? Well, now you can take one home with Adopt a Hacker — provided you’re part of the New York startup scene, that is.
Adopt A Hacker is a project that launched yesterday in order to persuade more hackers (read: developers) to find their way into the NYC fold, as well as to facilitate the travels of any hackers too bashful/scared to visit the city on their own.
Adopt A Hacker is the brainchild of Jonathan Wegener and Ben Fisher (as well as the startup weekend team of Aaron Knight, Michael Tseng, Nick Khuu, Michael DeFranco, Heather John, and Ariel Zavala), who built the site this past weekend after mulling over the Big Apple’s lack of hackers.
An article titled “Bus in the Hackers: NYC Startup Weekend” detailing the decided dearth, as well as a tourist/local matchmaking service called Big Apple Greeter served as inspiration for the duo.
Adopt A Hacker basically allows hackers to find techies they can stay with while in New York, or — at the very least — people in the scene to meet up with over coffee. “It’s an ambassador program for hackers who want to come to New York, but are intimidated by the city,” Wegener says.
The program itself is pretty simple. Hackers go to the site, sign in through Facebook and fill out an application detailing their skills, interests, background, social networks, etc. The team has developed a recommendation engine that then attempts to link up hackers and startup folks (all NYC volunteers) by degree of separation — three to four friends on Facebook, two to three connections of LinkedIn. The host then OKs the match, and the Hacker is sent an e-mail containing a list of hosts, complete with Facebook snaps and info.
So far, 150 New Yorkers have volunteered, and 25 hackers have planned trips to the city since Monday’s launch.
Hackers: Would you test out this service prior to visiting the city?
NB from the founders: “Hey, Ben & Jonathan here! Just wanted to add that Adopt A Hacker was built over the weekend for Startup Weekend, which was graciously housed at New Work City!”
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