As I said my school is small and many don't have much interaction with the outside tech world. I really want to Organise a hackathon and get my fellow students involved in building stuff. The few that I've explained it too are super interested however most when they first hear the word "hack" immediately get put off because they don't know how to "hack" into computers. What might be a more successful title I could use?
I would suggest your goal is not to persuade everyone else this is a good idea and then step forward together. It's to step forward, confident enough people will follow you.
I suggest just announce it, "hackathon arranged for Saturday 15th, torvalds hall, 8-5pm. Kicks with with talk by f bloggs on architecture of foobar project, by the end of the day we commit working code, documentation, tests and artwork to github. All skill levels welcome - rememebr real programmers ship. Pizzas after we commit."
Those who can or are just willing will work it out. And put up a page with more details, the contrib page, a link to ESRs "how to be a hacker" - http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html
People will follow you. But not till you are in front.
Thanks for this. One of my goals is to get my fellow students more involved in the building side of things and not just the academics. Get some real world stuff going.
Adapt to whatever you're doing, so if you're working with Arduino, Hombrew Arduino Weekend, Homebrew Robot Weekend, Homebrew Lisp Weekend, etc.