Liam jokes that he joined the hacker community by accident. Having attended a Local Hack Day in 2015, he ate a slice of pizza with someone from a different university and ended up going to their 24-hour hackathon the following week. During that first event, Liam met someone from yet another university that shared his same interest in running an event. Eight months later they had organised their very own hackathon (without university backing) in order to bring their local tech community closer together. This will always be something Liam looks back on as magical.
Liam’s hackathon, HackTheMidlands, is an independent hackathon run in the West Midlands, hosting 300+ attendees. Intending to inspire the same feeling of learning and excitement that he and his co-founder, Thomas Goodman, once felt, HackTheMidlands focuses on being a beginner-friendly event. They know how important the first hackathon is so they want to make the experience one worth remembering.
Having only previously been involved with game-development communities, the wider hacker community gave Liam a much broader sense of engineering and the tools he could use to create. Perspective aside, the people Liam has met throughout his years of attending and organising hackathons has opened up doors he never thought existed, and has made some of his closest friends.
It's a journey that has led him across multiple continents, working on a plethora of varied projects, and is one of the reasons his own startup has been successful and exists at all. His love for development communities led him to start GameDevNetwork, a community for game developers with over 9000 users, focusing on supporting new and experienced developers alike, in a relaxed, inclusive community. They regularly run online hackathons, jams, and charity events.
Hackathons have also been a place where Liam has learned about various technologies, specifically his discovery of Alexa. He began experimenting and pushing the limits of what voice technology can offer, especially when combined with realtime rendering engines. His work led him to be recognised as an Alexa Champion, and after reaching over 1,000,000 users across all of his apps, being interviewed by Amazon about his startup, MagicVoice.io, and Voice.tv.
After graduating from Birmingham City University in 2018, Liam went on to spend a year at Unity Technologies, giving talks on cross-platform Augmented Reality around the world.
Liam’s favorite hackathon project is from a medical hackathon he had traveled to that aimed to pair up developers with med students. His team created DocChart, an Augmented Reality app for doctors and nurses to use that would overlay patient information by recognising a QR code, instantly highlighting important information without diving through files. This was the most diverse team Liam had ever worked on, with each of its five members coming from completely different countries.
Quick Facts
Liam jokes that he joined the hacker community by accident. Having attended a Local Hack Day in 2015, he ate a slice of pizza with someone from a different university and ended up going to their 24-hour hackathon the following week. During that first event, Liam met someone from yet another university that shared his same interest in running an event. Eight months later they had organised their very own hackathon (without university backing) in order to bring their local tech community closer together. This will always be something Liam looks back on as magical.
Liam’s hackathon, HackTheMidlands, is an independent hackathon run in the West Midlands, hosting 300+ attendees. Intending to inspire the same feeling of learning and excitement that he and his co-founder, Thomas Goodman, once felt, HackTheMidlands focuses on being a beginner-friendly event. They know how important the first hackathon is so they want to make the experience one worth remembering.
Having only previously been involved with game-development communities, the wider hacker community gave Liam a much broader sense of engineering and the tools he could use to create. Perspective aside, the people Liam has met throughout his years of attending and organising hackathons has opened up doors he never thought existed, and has made some of his closest friends.
It's a journey that has led him across multiple continents, working on a plethora of varied projects, and is one of the reasons his own startup has been successful and exists at all. His love for development communities led him to start GameDevNetwork, a community for game developers with over 9000 users, focusing on supporting new and experienced developers alike, in a relaxed, inclusive community. They regularly run online hackathons, jams, and charity events.
Hackathons have also been a place where Liam has learned about various technologies, specifically his discovery of Alexa. He began experimenting and pushing the limits of what voice technology can offer, especially when combined with realtime rendering engines. His work led him to be recognised as an Alexa Champion, and after reaching over 1,000,000 users across all of his apps, being interviewed by Amazon about his startup, MagicVoice.io, and Voice.tv.
After graduating from Birmingham City University in 2018, Liam went on to spend a year at Unity Technologies, giving talks on cross-platform Augmented Reality around the world.
Liam’s favorite hackathon project is from a medical hackathon he had traveled to that aimed to pair up developers with med students. His team created DocChart, an Augmented Reality app for doctors and nurses to use that would overlay patient information by recognising a QR code, instantly highlighting important information without diving through files. This was the most diverse team Liam had ever worked on, with each of its five members coming from completely different countries.
Quick Facts
