Hackathons, makerfaires, design challenges and dome builds — the event engine that has produced 300+ innovation events, $300K in prizes, and single weekends drawing 8,000+ people.
Tiny Hacker House is, above everything, an event engine. Its founder has produced and directed more than 300 innovation events — hackathons, makerfaires, design challenges and dome builds — and the workshop’s calendar is where the community actually comes together.
Events are the forcing function. A hackathon gives builders a weekend and a prize pool; a makerfaire throws the doors open to families and students; a design challenge hands teams a brief and a deadline. Across all of them, the pattern is the same — strangers arrive, form teams, and leave with something built. That’s the whole point.
Weekend-to-week-long sprints. Builders, designers and engineers ship working prototypes against community-scale problems, with mentors and a prize pool.
Public showcases — robotics, IoT, fabrication and hardware — open to families, students and the curious, with live demos and build stations.
Brief-driven design sprints. Recent editions include Challenge 6.0 at UT Austin, Challenge 5.0 with 8,000+ attendees, and Challenge 4.0 with GirldayUT.
Hands-on geodesic build days — the 13.5 ft WonderDome and TinyDomeHomes, raised, hauled and reassembled at festivals and shows.
Selected recent and upcoming appearances — a representative slice of the 300+ events the workshop has produced or joined:
| When | Event | Role |
|---|---|---|
| Jan 2026 | Design Challenge 6.0 — UT Austin | Upcoming · host |
| Oct 2025 | Texas Linux Festival | Partner |
| Mar 2025 | SXSW 2025 — Austin | Showcase · demos · panels |
| Mar 2025 | Austin AI Film Festival | Programming partner |
| Nov 2024 | Electrify Expo | EV / mobility partner |
| Sep 2024 | Move America 2024 | Mobility · smart cities |
| Mar 2024 | Design Challenge 5.0 · 8,000+ attendees | Host · multi-track |
| Feb 2024 | Design Challenge 4.0 · GirldayUT | Girls in STEM · UT Austin |
| Jan 2023 | CES 2023 — Las Vegas | Showcase · press |
| 2018 | Launch · 13 US Mayors | Founding endorsements |
A representative selection from Tiny Hacker House’s own event history; confirm dates and details before planning around any single entry.
The numbers tell the story of what recurring events build over time: $300,000 in free cash prizes awarded across the design challenges, a 200,000+-strong network of diverse experts serving as mentors and alumni, and single weekends — like Design Challenge 5.0 — drawing 8,000+ attendees in Austin. An outdoor classroom built with and for girls in STEM, in partnership with GirldayUT, reached thousands of students on its own.
Want to be there for the next one? Subscribe to the dispatch for event announcements, or see what the events produce on the projects page.