# President at Hackerspace MMU

> Helped members start their own projects, ran sessions, coordinated a new logo and grew member registrations.

- Role: President, Hackerspace MMU
- Dates: Sep 2023 – Sep 2024
- Location: Multimedia University · Hybrid
- Skills: Leadership, Communication, Community Building
- Web version: https://tharshen.xyz/experience/hackerspace-mmu-president

Hackerspace MMU is a community where people with shared interests in coding, tech, art and more meet up and build things. Most of us are self-taught, but we lean on each other for guidance, especially when starting something new. I joined in June 2022 and was President from September 2023 to September 2024.

## What I did

- **Onboarded members** and helped them come up with their own projects to work on
- **Managed sessions**, where members give IdeaTalks and ProgressTalks on what they're building
- **Coordinated the design** of the new Hackerspace logo
- Reached **high numbers of member registrations**
- **Upheld the principles** of Hackerspace MMU

## Mentorship

I owe a lot to Willie Poh, who guided me throughout my presidency. What he taught me made me a better programmer, a better leader and a better person.

## Starting the Hacktrack rebuild

Near the start of my term, in November 2023, I started rebuilding **Hacktrack**, the system Hackerspace has used for 15 years to track members, projects and meetups. My first version was a Svelte frontend on top of the existing Rails app. I didn't finish it during my presidency, and it looks nothing like what runs today.

## Still here

I've stayed involved since stepping down. I came back to the rebuild in 2025, and it grew into the [Hackerspace Ecosystem](/experience/hackerspace-ecosystem): an API layer, a Next.js committee dashboard, an automated registration pipeline and a Discord bot, all running at zero cost.

## Links

- [Hackerspace MMU](https://hackerspacemmu.rocks/)