Our weekly Friday meetups are called Friday Hacks. They include one or two technical talks, sometimes followed by a hacking session. Through Friday Hacks, we hope to get people to come share their hacks, research, or technical knowledge with the technical community in NUS.

We have up to 2 talks at each session, with each talks being about 30–45 minutes long. Dinner is always served (usually pizza). Food is served at 6:30pm and talks start at 7pm.

We also record the talks if the speaker consents. Find our recordings here.

Speaker FAQ

When and where do Friday Hacks happen? Friday Hacks happen every Friday at 6:30pm, at Seminar Room 5, Level 2, Town Plaza, University Town, National University of Singapore unless otherwise stated.

How do I get there from outside campus, and where can I park? The closest MRT station is at Clementi. Take either 96 from the bus interchange towards Singapore Polytechnic, and get off 3 bus stops later. (You may also take bus 183 from the MRT station, but the bus frequency for 183 is low).

You can also take the NUS internal bus D2 from Kent Ridge MRT, and alight at the University Town stop.

If you are driving, you may park at a small parking lot at UTown opposite New Town Secondary School, along Dover Road. Let us know beforehand so we can guide you when you arrive.

Who is welcome to speak? Anyone! We do give some preference to NUS students, staff and professors, but we regularly invite speakers from all parts of the industry.

Who has given a Friday Hacks talk? We’ve had speakers from Google, Quora, Palantir, Thought Works, Pivotal Labs, Nokia, Carousell, and Viki, amongst many others.

What time should speakers arrive? People start streaming in at 6pm, but Friday Hacks are informal, so anytime between 6pm–7pm is okay. The actual event starts at 7pm.

What topic should I talk about? Technical topics, of course! Talking about a weekend hack project, your research, or some ideas you recently had about tech are all great topics for a Friday Hacks talk. The more code you show, the better! Note though that you should not give a recruiting pitch. We find that people are more receptive to pitches given at the tail end of technical talks.

What’s the audience like? Anyone is welcome to attend Friday Hacks, though our audience is primarily NUS School of Computing students. From experience, we expect 30–50 students on average at every weekly meeting.

What tools are provided? We have a Windows desktop, a projector with VGA, a large whiteboard, and wireless network access. Let us know in your email if you need anything else and we’ll see what we can do.