High Seas
What is High Seas?
High Seas is a general you ship we ship program run by Hack Club. Hack Club is a non-profit organization that has various educational STEAM related activities throughout the year.
These activities are often in the form of a you ship, we ship, which means you, the hacker, ship a project, and Hack Club ships something. Hack Club has a lot more to offer than just ysws programs. They have a great communities and often host hackathons such as Counterspell.
High Seas is special because the you ship part is any project you're working on, and they ship a LOT.
Need Digikey credits for your next project? You got it. Need a flipper zero? Why not? High Seas had TONS of prizes for people, helping them create their next project without having to worry about paying for it. Needed a PCB? Just get some PCB manufacturing credits. Needed a 3D printer? Get the Bambu Lab A1 Mini. Needed some tools? Hack Club had you covered with iFixit credits, calipers, a Pinecil, and so much more!
My Experience
My experience with High Seas was overall fairly positive. It encouraged me to get a lot of pending projects done (like this website, and also this very article with less than 30 minutes before the event ends) and also enabled me to get the basic tools and parts I needed to create other projects in the future.
Sure, there were occasional problems like the website crashing because everyone decided to use it at the exact same time, but those weren't frequent. It was also nice to talk to other people about High Seas, and just programming in general. One major plus point for Hack Club is the community. Because there isn't any sign-up or payments you need to make, it's a great place to meet tons of talented people.
Mystic Tavern
I decided to volunteer for Mystic Tavern. It's an extension to High Seas, where you meet up with other teens near you who also participated in High Seas. I saw the message in the Slack saying that we can organize or join meetups near us, and I thought it was a good idea. After a lot of talking, we finally settled on March 30th, 2025 from 4PM to 6PM. I don't normally do things like this, but it was fun. We even got custom t-shirts with everyone's username and QR codes to certain projects that the Hack Club team chose from our submissions.
Unfortunately, a lot of people couldn't show up (it ended up being Colin, Kavin, and me) but was fun nonetheless. We went to Aljohn's, a local pizza shop and ate, talked, and walked around. I learned that Kavin goes to the other high school in my school district. I already knew Colin, he was the programmer on our team at Counterspell.
After Kavin had left, Colin and I decided to head to my home for a bit, since his train was scheduled to come quite a bit later, and it was still cold out. I also got a chance to show him my room with my 3D printer, tools, and computer (that I built). When our time was up, we dropped him off at the train station and that was that.
Even though Mystic Tavern wasn't what we expected due to the last-minute cancellations, it was still super fun. I really enjoyed talking with the two and the evening overall was great. I don't really have anything bad to say about it, and the t-shirts were also super cool!
