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). Talks start at 7pm and food is typically served after the first talk.

We believe that knowledge should be spread freely and openly. We typically record all our Friday Hacks sessions. Find our recordings here.

Speaker FAQ

When and where do Friday Hacks happen? Friday Hacks happen every Friday at 7:00pm SGT, at the National University of Singapore. Do watch our Friday Hacks schedule on our home page for the exact venue for a Friday Hacks session. We will also be streaming the Friday Hacks session online via Zoom.

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? If you are the first speaker, anytime between 6:30pm–6:45pm is okay. People start streaming in at 6:30pm, and the actual event starts at 7pm.

If you are the second speaker, do try to arrive by 7:30pm–7:45pm, so that there is not too long a wait after the first speaker. Of course, you’re welcome to attend the first speaker’s talk as well!

What topic should I talk about? Technical topics, of course! You can share their stories and experiences 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.

How do I get there from outside campus, and where can I park? If you plan to take public transportation, you may go to the various MRT stations such as Clementi, Kent Ridge MRT, and Buona Vista. Directions to NUS SoC can be found here.

If you are driving, there are paid parking lots for the public in NUS. The nearest parking lots in the School of Computing for visitors are CP 11 and CP 15. Staff season holders may park at CP 13, which is right outside COM 1.

For more information on parking, please refer to this site

What tools are provided? We have a Windows desktop, a projector, 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.