Here at Hover, we love helping people do awesome things on the Internet. That’s what we’re all about. And with the current underrepresentation of women in the tech industry, we couldn’t be more excited to support Ladies Learning Code to make their latest event a big success.

We’ll let them tell you all about it in this special guest post by Nicole Belanger – TEDx Talker, writer, entrepreneur, and all around rockstar.

Early in the morning on June 7th, over 60 learners made their way to Ladies Learning Code’s home at The Lab for a brand-new two-day event called Hackapalooza.

For nearly three years, Ladies Learning Code has been offering beginner-friendly workshops where learners can develop valuable technical skills in a social and collaborative environment. In Toronto, thousands of people have already attended these workshops, and many of our learners were looking for that next step in their learn-to-code journey — and so Hackapalooza was born.

Two Days. One Website.

The mission of this two-day workshop-meets-hackathon for beginners was simple: over 48 hours, learners would build a beautiful website of their very own and launch it to the world. The weekend was filled with workshops, lightning talks, and open hack time, all facilitated by over 60 incredible volunteers from our community

Dozens of women (and men!) came from different backgrounds, industries, and walks of life, but all shared a common mission that weekend: to build and create.

From portfolio sites to business websites and beyond, each learner took a blank site and customized it over the course of the weekend, adding elements as they learned new skills like typography, CSS animations, and API integration. Interested in seeing some of those finished products? Check out the Ladies Learning Code blog.

Making Internet Magic

It was so exciting to see the incredible creativity and talent of the learners throughout the course of the weekend. They had a lot of information thrown their way, and they tackled these new challenges with curiosity and grit.

With Hackapalooza, we wanted to give our learner community the opportunity to stretch the limits of their digital knowledge and creativity and build something brand new that was all their own. One of the most inspiring parts of the weekend was seeing learners launch their completed projects live for the world to see — a moment that was made possible without the generous support of our friends at Hover!

We <3 @hover! Thank you for helping to make the #Hackapalooza experience unforgettable for our learners! pic.twitter.com/fpnJvNU2bU

— Ladies Learning Code (@llcodedotcom) June 8, 2014

Through an exciting collaboration with Hover, we were able to provide our learners with one free year of domain services to help them get that much closer to bringing their website to life. It was a pleasure to be able to work with a local company like Hover to help give our learners that priceless moment of pride when they take their site live on the internet.

With events like Hackapalooza, Ladies Learning Code is on a mission to bring beginner-friendly tech education to women and men across Canada. And with the generous support of our community — from sponsors like Hover to our amazing volunteers — we can’t wait to bring digital literacy to more and more Canadians every year!