About Us

Who we are

The Austin Hackers Association is a loose group of hackers and security professionals in the Austin, Texas area. We have monthly meetings that do have rules. We also occasionally eat sushi, BBQ, Tacos, and drink beer together.

Our Meetings

The meetings consist of short “turbo-talks” from anyone that would like to speak on a topic for anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes. There is a projector and screen (HDMI only) if you wish to use a slide deck or perform demos.

• For time/location of meetings please see our Meetings page.
• Before attending, please see the Rules page

If this is your first time, come prepared to speak. Continued failure to present will result in being removed from the venue.

Participation

Participation is mandatory for continued membership in the group. What this means is that to retain a subscription to the mailing list and to be allowed entrance to the meetings, you must contribute to the group in some form. The best way to do this is to attend the meetings and speak about what you’re working on, what you’re up to, etc.

Note, it is up to The Mob to decide whether or not you are participating enough, and if it seems that you aren’t the heavy-hand of the AHA Lords will come down upon you and you will be un-subbed from the email list, booted from IRC and/or heckled/removed if you continue to show up to the meetings.

Presentation Ideas

The scariest thing for most people is trying to figure out what to present on at AHA! While this may seem challenging, it’s actually quite easy. We have some basic suggestions that may help you:

• Present your own material/work
• We love code, demo’s and live examples of work. But make it your own. Don’t give us a 101 on a topic that any of us could just lookup. ourselves or read an already written how-to on.
• It doesn’t have to be finished work.
• If you’ve shown you’re doing your own research but are stuck, come talk to us and we’ll likely be able to help!
• No book reports.
• Don’t tell us all about someone else’s research that you read and now are regurgitating to us. Expand on it! Add to it!

Lastly, many of the best AHA! presentations were written one hour before the meeting, or onsite during other speakers. We don’t need or want overly complicated powerpoint slides.

Out of Town

If you are from out of town, showing up to a meeting when you happen to be in town and then continuing to participate in discussions on the email list/IRC may (but not always) be considered sufficient. If you are NOT from out of town, you will be held to a higher standard… likely being expected to speak at the meetings at least every other meeting that you attend or so.

Simply showing up to the meetings and hiding in the shadows or lurking on IRC is definitely NOT a sufficient level of participation.