Comedy Hack Day to combine coding and humour in Vancouver

A browser plug-in that disguises TMZ and The Onion articles as pieces by The New York Times, an e-calculator that divvies up restaurant bills according to the racial and gender inequalities your dining companions face, and a mobile dating service—appropriately dubbed settl—that automatically swipes right on every one of your prospective matches: yes, these are real, fully functioning apps, two of which are currently available online or for Apple’s iOS.

They’re also products of Comedy Hack Day, a software development competition that tasks comedians, programmers, and designers with creating a hilarious, tongue-in-cheek app or website in 48 hours.

Founded in 2012 by self-described comedy company Cultivated Wit, the event shakes up the typical hackathon—a coding contest that challenges teams of developers to build an app in a set amount of time—by placing humour at the centre of the process. Beer is involved.

Successful Comedy Hack Days have taken place in cities such as New York, San Francisco, and Toronto, and this weekend, Vancouver will be hosting its own iteration.

“It’s really easy to make a theoretical app that’s funny,” Ian MacKinnon, lead organizer of Comedy Hack Day Vancouver, tells the Straight by phone. “What Comedy Hack Day is about is trying to make an app that actually works and functions and can be released.”

This Saturday (November 5), 60 of Vancouver’s sharpest and funniest techies will meet bright and early at Lighthouse Labs (300–128 West Hastings Street). Those coming in with ideas will pitch their concepts to other attendees after which groups will form.

The “hacking”—or software development—then happens over the next day and a half with the occasional break for meals and booze. After the teams present their apps to one another on Sunday afternoon (November 6), five finalists will be determined by peer evaluations.

Although the hackathon is now sold out, the real fun comes on Sunday night when the finalists demo their programs to a live audience and a rollicking panel of judges—namely, Drew Ogryzek, cofounder of the Vancouver Tech Podcast, comedian Fatima Dhowre, and improv artist Lauren McGibbon—at the Media Club.

“The judges are there more to make jokes than to actually judge people,” MacKinnon notes.

The winning team walks away with “notoriety and a trophy” as well as the admiration of their fellow developers. Many of the services later become available online or on Apple’s and Google’s respective app stores.

“They very intentionally need zero investment,” MacKinnon says of the proposed software. “Apps are cheap enough nowadays that you don’t really have any cost beyond the labour of putting it together.”

Other apps that have been created at past Comedy Hack Days include Got This Thing, a “no-ductivity” program that fills your calendar with random events so you have an excuse to avoid lame social outings; Reddit Check, a background scan that lays out the terrible things that Reddit users have written in the past; and Feminize It, an online service that finds the “female version” of everyday products—from toothbrushes and razors to fire extinguishers—so “your little lady brain doesn’t have to”.

Tickets to Comedy Hack Day Vancouver’s finals showcase start at $10 and are available online. Given the rapidly growing tech industry in Vancouver—and the introduction of coding in learning spaces such as B.C.’s public schools—MacKinnon hopes that the two-day event will become an annual affair.

“It allows us to show that coding and these new kind of skills that people are talking about bringing into the mainstream…can be fun,” he explains. “It’s not all just work and creating startups and making these super serious things.”

Comedy Hack Day Vancouver’s finals show takes place this Sunday (November 6) at the Media Club (695 Cambie Street). For more information about the event, or to purchase tickets, click here.