End of term message: Good luck for exams and enjoy the break

Good luck for exams!

As the term ends HackSoc wishes good luck to all our UoN students taking exams over the christmas period! Smash it guys. Next newsletter will be out in the new year along with our new event plans.

HackNotts is on its way!

HackNotts is back, and in-person this time! Learn new skills, meet new people, and engage with new tech and ideas in a 24-hour coding competition. Make whatever you want in teams of up to four and win prizes!

Tickets are free and entry is open to everybody, regardless of skill level or University they attend, so get all your friends down and make something cool. Read more about it and get your tickets here!

HackSoc: What we do

HackSoc is the University of Nottinghams Hacking and coding society. We run speaker events, community get togethers and socials for those of any ability interested in hacking and coding. If you are looking to improve your skills or contribute to our hackathons hacksoc is a great space for you.

This year so far

This year we have had some fantastic events from both outside and inside the societies community. Here is a recap of the first half of this fantastic year.

Welcome talks: On 23rd september We started the year off with our welcome talks for our new and returning members. An introduction to game development at Jubilee campus and on the 28th September Alex lead with an introduction to cyber security which would become a very popular weekly workshop.

Programming cafes: These took place every thursday and if you haven't been yet are a great way to get inspired and work with like minded people.

Cyber security workshops: In these sessions which took place every friday Alex taught the HackSoc society the basics of cyber security. This included the computer misuse act talk, kali security, penetration testing tools and some beginner machines on hack the box and try hack me. This lead to Alex entering a team for a capture the flag virtual event. In which the university placed 158th out of 594 groups.

Making discord bots: This event took place on 12th of October and involved the Discord.js library. This is a classic beginners coding workshop and I would encourage those who missed the event to check out similar workshops on youtube and other platforms. The event looked at discord servers, permissions and java script.

Introduction to Linux: This event on the 19th of October covered the basics of the Linux OS and covered basic commands in Bash. Linux is a key first step in developing computer coding skills and essential to learning penetration testing.

Docker workshop:On the 21st our President Peter showed the society members an introduction to Docker. Docker is a way of packaging software so it runs on any hardware. Covering dockerfiles, images and containers Peter showed us how to use this tool for ourselves.

Pete Gallagher friend of HackSoc: On the 26th of October Pete Gallagher an IOT expert and friend of HackSoc visited the university to give our members a workshop on building a remote control arm which could work in virtual reality as an augmented reality project. The talk was a fascinating look at the world of internet of things and Pete was kind enough to give a Q and A session at the end too. Pete used .Net 5, Blazor and Signal R to bring this project to life. For anyone who missed the talk it can be found here at his website.

AWS Student User group: On the 3rd of November CompSoc and HackSoc collaborated with AWS (Amazon Web Services) who work on cloud computing platforms, APIs and Virtual computer machines. Members were given the opportunity to hear about AWS recuitment opporunities and take part in a game development challange. Goodies and pizza was also up for grabs at one of our bigger events of the year.

Arch install event: On the 2nd of November the president of HackSoc peter and the graphics officer Zac set out on the difficult challange of installing arch linux. The difficulty here comes with the fact Arch doesn't have a graphical installer and requires a lot of foot work to get what most consider a more difficult and lower performing distro. There is also no booting from a virtual CD drive and so a usb boot is required.

Christmas pub quiz: HackSoc celebrated christmas at the Rose and Crown where we had games, prizes and lots of fun. The winners of the quiz won free drinks and society hoodies.

Join the discord

The HackSoc Discord is the place to be this year. It is where you can chat about tech or anything else with a great community. Join now and stay in the loop with our latest information and events.

Feedback form

We are always trying to improve our events. If you have a few minutes to spare, please help the committee out by answering this quick survey. Your response will be extremely valuable to us!

See you in the new year

From all of us at HackSoc we hope you have had a great time off and we will see you soon in the new year! Good luck with any exams and coursework too.