Dave Haynes

Earlier this year myself & James Darling started planning the very first Music Hack Day, held in London. In truth, I had no idea what I was letting myself in for. But I was convinced that it was a good idea and thankfully a lot of much cleverer people than me thought it was too. So somehow, with the help of those people and a lot of hard work, we managed to pull it off. It was a big success.

But the best thing we managed to achieve on that weekend back in July was to start rolling a small snowball. Something that more hands could push and make bigger, better and stronger. The snowball was pushed to Berlin, then to Amsterdam and somehow it made its way across the Atlantic to a surprisingly mild Boston. There are now a lot of hands helping roll this snowball and we’ve just confirmed that it will hit the colder climates of Stockholm in late January. I’m really quite excited, it makes those first steps seem so much more worthwhile.

I wanted to write a summary of Music Hack Day Boston in this post too but while I’ve been recovering from a bit of mild jetlag a few people have rather eloquently beaten me to it. So here’s a quick roundup:

Anthony Volodkin (HypeMachine) explains why Music Hack Day rocked (and why Chris Dahlen was a total badass!). Brian Whitman (The Echo Nest) sums up his thoughts and best bits. Brandon C Walsh (Dyson Sound) takes inspiration from one of the panels that took place on the weekend. Jen Nathan (NHPR’s Word Of Mouth) highlights the hardware hacking aspect in a short radio piece

And Songkick’s Ian Hogarth sums up his take on Music Hack Day in this video interview with BostonBandCrush.

So all that’s left for me to do now is say a massive thank you to a few special people:

Jon Pierce, who had the vision and determination to make this event happen in Boston
Paul Lamere, who did such an awesome job of putting the pieces together and being a great master of ceremonies too!
Elissa Barrett, who worked tirelessly to make this event one of the most organised I’ve been to so far
Brian Whitman, who was a perfect host and made me (and several others) extremely welcome in his lovely home.