Hack the Anvil at Purdue draws tech community

Except for a few students working quietly at desks spread across the sanctuary floor, the large church building turned co-working studio that is The Anvil sits empty.

For now.

On Friday night, hundreds of students will fill two floors of the building for 36 hours of hacking — a term that for many people might evoke images of Russian or North Korean cyber thieves but is actually just jargon used in the tech community.

“The term hacker ... is typically negative, related to doing illegal things and stealing credit card numbers and stuff,” said Spencer Brown, president of the Purdue Hackers club. “But within the community, that’s a totally different definition. If you’re a hacker, you’re just the kind of guy who’s going to spend your weekend working on side projects.”

For Hack the Anvil participants, many of whom study computer science or electrical and computer engineering at Purdue, a side project isn’t a junk car sitting in the garage, waiting to be restored — it’s hardware or software they’re developing outside the classroom.

Hack the Anvil is one of many “hack-a-thons” gaining popularity at universities nationwide, including such Big Ten schools as the Universities of Illinois and Michigan and such top schools as Stanford and MIT.

Students from schools across the country filled the 500 available spots at “Boilermake,” The Anvil’s hack-a-thon last semester. Although more than enough Purdue students applied to fill every single spot, only 150 were accepted to save space for some of the other 2,000 applicants from other universities.

“Our main goal overall is to build a hacker community on campus, so it kind of stinks that we had to reject so many Purdue students,” Brown said. “So we decided we would run a spring hack-a-thon that we could just invite everyone (from Purdue).”

No tech experience? Not to worry. Workshops by Carmel-based Eleven Fifty Coding Academy will help even the newest of newbs feel like hackers. Brown said any Purdue student is encouraged to participate.

“We’re definitely more focused on bringing in more people,” he said.

Interested students can register on the Hack the Anvil Web page or just show up at the door with a computer, said Grant Gumina, The Anvil’s director.

“There will be some times when there aren’t a whole lot of spots, sometimes there are going to be some, depending on the hours,” he said. “So definitely anyone who wants to is more than welcome to come in and hang out.”

While Eleven Fifty is well-known in Indiana’s tech community, most will recognize several of the event’s sponsors, including Apple, Cisco and Microsoft.

Although there won’t be first-, second- or third-place prizes for those with the most interesting project, sponsor companies will offer awards to hackers who build hardware or software related to their business.

But the goal isn’t earning money, said Evan Walsh, a member of the Hack the Anvil executive board. It’s to, well, hack — for lack of a better term — and learn something new along the way.

“We don’t want to bring in as many people as possible and churn them out, like, ‘You went to a hack-a-thon,’ ” Walsh said. “We want you to have a really quality experience and actually learn.”

If you go

What: Hack the Anvil

Where: The Anvil co-working studio, 320 North St., West Lafayette

When: 7 p.m. Friday to 3 p.m. March Sunday

Register: Visit the Hack the Anvil Web page or show up at the door with your computer.