Miami ‘Hack Week’ hopes to lure tech programmers to Magic City
A key ingredient remains missing from Miami’s next-great-tech-hub brew: an abundance of software engineers.
A group led by longtime South Florida innovators hope they can lay the seeds to change that.
They are organizing Miami Hack Week, kicking off Aug. 1. The goal is ambitious: To ultimately convince 5,000 engineers to move to Miami.
Co-organizer Dave Fontenot, a South Florida native who founded MHacks, which went on to become the largest hackathon in the world, said finding qualified talent is a problem for even the most developed tech meccas. But Miami now has a chance to play spoiler given its current momentum as an alternative to the traditional centers.
“Even in San Francisco, everyone wants more engineers,” he said. “In Miami, that problem is 10 times bigger...This is not our only shot, but it’s going to be the best one we’re going to have to convince people to come here.”
Despite seeing an unprecedented surge in tech workers, the Miami metro area still only had about 60,000 workers in computer and mathematical occupations, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That compares with about 160,000 in San Francisco alone and another 144,000 in Silicon Valley. New York City had 305,000.
Seven local sponsors have lined up so far to back Miami Hack Week’s 10 official houses, where hackers will get together to work on themed projects that will be presented at the end of the week to four judges: Lucy Guo, founder and general partner at Backend Capital; Brian Brackeen, general partner at Lightship Capital; Michael Sayman, senior product manager at Roblox; and Francesca de Quesada Covey, an executive with The Venture.City.
The winner will receive a boat and sandbar party.
“While we’ve had a strong presence of venture capitalists and founders coming to Miami, we’re curating this for developers who are looking for an alternative place to go,” said co-organizer Ja’dan Johnson, marketing and community lead at networking app Upstream and venture capital scout at venture group and angel network Florida Funders.
Fontenot said that there is already lots of overlooked engineering talent, especially those of Latin origin, in Miami. Even so, every city has some form a talent gap — and Miami’s is still more severe than others.
With Hack Week, the foundation is being laid to begin making inroads.
“Engineers are looking for a community, and we don’t have one yet, or at least one that hasn’t hit critical mass,” he said. “That’s why we are having to be so ambitious.”
This story was originally published July 20, 2021 at 12:57 PM.
