July 7, 2025

The first edition

Written on June 7th, 2025 from 2:30PM to 5:00PM EDT. This document is a really quick braindump on some thoughts I’ve had about running programs for awhile. This will probably be reorganized over time, but for now here we are.

Preface

I want to preface by saying that NONE of this is hard theory or fact. Most of what I’m about to share is solely personal opinion and should not be treated as the end-all be-all of how to run programs.

I also want to make it clear that I do not have experience running Hack Club events as a non-hq affiliated person. I do think that people underestimate the amount of agency that they personally have running their own programs.

On running YSWSes

The infamous age old question of Hack Club. There are so, so many posts in #ysws about YSWS ideas, but very, very few actually have anything built to run it. I feel like part of the reason for this is that it’s unclear how to actually run one. I hope this section helps clear some of that up

For the sake of simplicity, I’m mainly referring to trad style YSWSes without any extra systems or events. Just You Ship a thing, We Ship a thing. (i.e hackpad, sprig, etc).

I find generally, the best YSWSes I’ve run were ones that emulated my own experience as a maker growing up:

  • Hackpad worked great because it emulated my personal experience making macropads when I was 14/15. Design your own pcb, case, and figure out QMK. My QMK setup is still in the main repo to this day
  • Infill worked great because I emulated my own personal experience building Neutrino when I was 16/17. Come up with an idea, journal it every day, and then buy all the parts and build it.

Meanwhile, the ones that didn’t work so well were ones that didn’t really emulate much of my own experience:

  • I never fully designed a quality keyboard from scratch, yet running Hackboard I wanted people to create really polished stuff. As a result I procrastinated reviewing forever in the hopes that I’ll make the ultimate example.
  • Constellation died because I never actually shipped a full-stack website that interacted with people. I was so caught up in designing a cool overcomplicated system I never actually shipped the core parts that made it awesome.
  • The only thing I ever made in asylum was the NFC tags, but I didn’t have experience printing more than 1 design and so the logistics of that was a failure and to this day they’re not fulfilled

Notice a pattern here? Every time I tried to do something I didn’t have much experience in, some sort of program design decision ended up shooting the whole program in the foot.

This is why it’s so incredibly important that you actually do the YS before the WS, or at least something very tangential. It allows you to make the correct decisions that allow the program to run on a logistical level, without compromising on the experience & environment required for people to actually do the YS.

There are ways to run YSWSes without actually having done the YS first, but it’s really, really hard and requires a lot more energy post-launch to pivot the program in the right directions to actually make it work. Would not really recommend for your first program.

With that in mind, I think that generally, the things required to run a YSWS:

  • A clear YS/WS
  • A realistic slightly above-average example of what the YS should look like
  • A website with the following:
    • A clear flow of how to start
    • A clear flow of how to submit
    • Some resources on how to build it
  • An airtable database (admittedly, this needs to be made from HQ’s side)
  • A Fillout Form (also HQ)
  • Money (HQ)
  • A hands-off (from HQ perspective) plan to fulfill within 1-2 weeks.
  • A lot, and a LOT of community follow-up. Workshops, check-ins, etc. Build a community

And that’s really it! If you have ALL of those, more likely than not someone would pick up your YSWS.

I also think that there’s a lot of aspects ab running YSWSes that isn’t as intuitive. I’m just going to braindump the rest of what I know down below:

The biggest part of running a YSWS is building a community, hands down. It doesn’t matter how perfect your system is, how well-written your documentation is. If there’s no human element, then there’s nothing that’s actually going to draw them back. It is so incredibly important that you put a ton of energy into it, because that’s what’s going to get people back in. It’s having friends to do things together.

Don’t ever let the scale of your program compromise the minimum quality for each Hack Clubber. It doesn’t matter if you get 200 people if 50% of them have a terrible position. Focus on quality.

Running booths like infill.

I really, really wish people ran more booths at their local maker faires/exhibits/whatever. It’s super easy.

  1. Have a couple project ideas. Ideally you should have past projects too, but just some ideas is honestly enough
  2. Apply for a booth. Make it clear you’re a teen maker.
  3. Get some local friends to do it with you. If you don’t have any who are interested, make some new ones!
  4. Show up at the booth. Have a blast sharing what you’ve made to the world.

It seems dead simple, yet we see basically none of it. Is it that people don’t know about local events? I’m really curious for thoughts here

Experiments?

Moving forward, I do want to try a different type of YSWS sponsorship where I can invest say, $1000 in a program and have someone else do pretty much everything else. I think that a standardized hardware YSWS can be outlined fairly easily. None of them would be big, but even 50-60 people per program would be great.

The only requirement is that it runs at $4 per hour worked or less.

I’m not sure when this would be. Probably later

I wish; Epilogue.

I wish people would be more proud of their designs and ship it. Every single time I finished a hardware project, I was so eager to make it proper and official, so to speak. I made a PR to the official QMK repo, I documented it with full instructions, made pretty pictures, etc.

I’m not too sure how/why people don’t do this more. I think part of it is that is that because it’s not physically built, it doesn’t feel quite as real yet.

  • I think the strat to fix this is to just figure out how to get people to follow through on a finished design so that they actually want to ship it, instead of forcing people to do so. Maybe I’ll run this as a small experiment

I wish people would try to activate their local communities in ways that aren’t just school clubs. Literally just inviting 1-2 of your friends, doing a hardware YSWS with them, and then building it together seems like a really awesome activity and I’m not sure why more people don’t do so. I think it’s because I’ve been terrible at fulfillment. I’m not sure

Above all, I wish people would fight more to run stuff in their local communities. I am SO thankful so many people are participating but there is still so, so much more to go.

I’ve been doing this stuff since I was 9, but I never really got bought in until I was 16-17. I couldn’t find a single community of young people doing this stuff. It needs to exist, and it starts with us.