pulakm

This weekend is Hackcon [0], where the organizers of most of the college hackathons in the country (including PennApps, HackMIT, MHacks, etc) are meeting to talk about best practices, community building, the future of college hackathons, and more.

There is still room for talk proposals, so, HN, what would you like to see us talk about?

[0] http://www.hackcon.io/

I'm one of the organizers of PennApps, which takes place in our university building. Someone left a laptop unattended, and it was stolen. This is unprecedented - we've never had any thefts in the previous 6 iterations of the hackathon. However, it's a lot bigger this time around (1000+ students), and people are a bit more spread out. We have security measures in places and guards around the building, but there are definitely entrances to the building where people can get in when someone is leaving, without having access.

My question is - what is the appropriate response to something like this happening? We want to help the person who had their computer stolen have a positive experience, but we also don't want to create adverse incentives.