alumNY Reunion w/ NY Times Games
It’s been a week. As we take the time to process and regroup one thing to remember is that in hard times the only thing people can control is their community. Please take care of yourself, engage with your communities and remember that you will always be a part of the hackNY community, and hackNY will continue to build a diverse and inclusive community and empower the next generation of socially responsible leaders.
alumNY Reunion Nov. 19 with speakers from NY Times Games
Join your fellow alumNY for food, speakers and an update on hackNY!
Nicole Zhu and Hunter Calvert will speak to how NYT Games leverages behavioral data to inform their strategy, and also about engineering and new games.
Nicole Zhu is an engineering manager at The New York Times where she leads the Discovery+ and New Games teams. She has worked in media for 9+ years and was previously an engineering manager at Vox Media, where she led the audience platform team that redesigned The Verge in 2022. She has spoken at conferences such as SRCCON and MozFest, and was selected for Poynter's Leadership Academy for Women in Media in 2023.
Hunter Calvert is an analytics leader with 10+ years of experience working in the gaming and media industries analyzing player behavior and helping build smarter products. Since early 2022 he has been at New York Times Games (NYT Games), helping them on their mission to become the premier destination for digital puzzles. He has previously worked at Electronic Arts, Rockstar Games, Kabam, and SEGA on beloved franchises like The Sims and Grand Theft Auto.
Nov. 19th, 6:30-8:30pm, Viam HQ (across from the Lincoln Center)
RSVP via Partiful (needed for security desk)
2025 Summer Fellowship Applications
2025 applications are open and we love seeing the application numbers up vs the last couple years! Keep the momentum going, the first round of applications closes Nov 11, please share the hackNY instagram and new fellowship page with your networks and tech clubs at your university, and encourage them to apply:
https://hackny.org/fellows-program
Help review applications! If you're interested in helping review / interview the next generation of hackNY Fellows, please check out this form for details, timelines, etc:
https://forms.gle/voTh78wsQ7Qctq2KA
DM @sakib on Slack for questions
hackNY Board of Directors
The hackNY Board is still recruiting new alumNY Board Members! Join hackNY leadership and help to guide the organization to its next phase. Ideal candidates have a passion for hackNY and alignment with our mission and preferable experience in fundraising, event planning, program development, and/ or marketing. Click here for more information on the position and to apply, or nominate a fellow alumNY.
Org Progress
Shy and I and the Fundraising Committee continue our work on sustainability for hackNY – we’ll give a short update at the reunion, and watch this space and SlackNY as we share documents and ask for alumNY input on potential new programs.
A small win to share: Operating a non-profit organization requires many “boring” but necessary administrative tasks like filing paperwork and taxes, renewing various insurances, keeping the books up to date, etc.
In 2023 hackNY had no paid employees for the first time, and some paperwork with New York State was not filed resulting in a $21,000(!) fine. Recently we contested the fine and produced documentation to back our claim and NYS ruled that we owe zero.
Since then we’ve tightened up our processes to make sure things like that do not happen again, and I’m happy that hackNY “made” $21,000 🙂
Cheers,
-eric