I don’t normally talk about work here – but this is really really cool.

For the last few months I’ve been bursting at the seems to talk about this – Hack Day 2007 – it’s going to be held at the amazing Alexandra Palace – known to us biker sorts as the home of the London Motorcycle Show (now at ExCeL) – and now the Superbike Magazine Bike show.

I was dead chuffed when we decided to hold it there. There’s so much history for the BBC there, and it seems perfect to me that the place of birth for TV, is the place of birth for a whole load of amazing stuff that can be distributed in so many cool ways. Ally Pally was the first place that broadcast regular HD TV transmissions way back when TV sets were 4” wide…. it just seems fitting that we’re now trying to work out how we wire the worlds most advanced studios (at the time) for wi-fi!

From the backstage.bbc.co.uk blog

We mentioned this some time ago to get the dates in you diary – but now the time has come for you to sign up!

http://hackday.org will take your applications – the wording on the site is a bit ‘official’ but that’s what happens when lawyers attack.

The event is going to be truly amazing, Tom and I (not to mention a whole army of really passionate people at both organisations) have been working our bums off to make sure it’s going to be THE event for hackers in Europe. Essentially 400+ developers will descend on Alexandra Palace on the 16th and 17th of June – there’ll be truck loads of pizza, beer, wi-fi and shed loads of help.

The plan is arrive Saturday morning, register and listen to some funky people talk about funky stuff, before 24 hours of hacking madness begins – we’ve got the run of the palace overnight so you can pull apart and build ’till the wee small ours before grabbing a nap in a quiet corner. Once the hacking is over and done with you’ll be able to present your ideas to everyone on the main stage – just before we announce the winners and the evening gig starts – the band is MASSIVE – not telling who it is yet (it’s not Beck).

We’ll be handing out extra tickets for the Sunday night gig – so if you get on the list you’ll be able to bring along a couple of friends for that night.

So you have no excuse – if you’re part of backstage.bbc.co.uk – then you’re right in the middle of the community that will rock this years Hack Day!

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