December 2024

After the success of the very first HackerHouse Taiwan in February 2024 in Taipei, I quickly knew I wanted to do another one!

There were two goals I had in mind for the second edition:

1. To invite more local folks to join the fun \o/
2. To show folks a bit more of Taiwan than just Taipei

I pitched this idea to Anita Chen from the DIGI Gold Card Community, and she and her awesome team from Taipei Computer Association and Startup Terrace Kaohsiung were excited about the plan and instrumental in making it happen! Thank you so much Victor Kawaguti, Veronica Yuting Tsai, and Dana Liu for all your help! 🫶

Interested in the next edition of HackerHouse Taiwan? Join the mailing list on hackerhousetaiwan.fyi and join the WhatsApp Community.

Why Kaohsiung?

Kaohsiung is the second largest city in Taiwan, and is known for its beautiful beaches, delicious food, and rich history.

Additionally, it's more laid back, more spacious, and more affordable than Taipei. And, as an added bonus, its climate in December is still nice and sunny. All these factors were crucial in creating a good experience for a larger group of people.

This time around we were almost 30 people from all around the world, so being able to find restaurants and activities that can accommodate a large group of people is were Kaohsiung really shines. For example, one evening we rolled up to a hot pot restaurant with 20 people without any reservation and they were able to fit us in. This would be quite the challenge in Taipei!

Weekend in Taipei

That being said, Taipei is of course a must visit, especially when it's your first time visiting Taiwan, as it was for some of the participants. Taipei is really unique, has fantastic nature, scenery, and cultural sights, and also an abundance of incredible restaurants and night markets!

Supabase Launch Week Meetup

We kicked things off on Friday night with the Supabase Launch Week Meetup, graciously hosted by digiBlock C who have a great learning space in a convenient location. We were lucky to have three fantastic local speakers showcasing the awesome projects they have built with Supabase.

• Brandon Liu sharing about using Protomaps and Overture Maps together with Supabase.
• Yukai Huang, developer and co-founder of HackMD, sharing about some of the awesome side projects he built with Supabase.
• Ming-Cheng Ho, co-founder of iCHEF, sharing about how he built PictoTales, AI-powered children's book creation with Supabase and OpenAI.

While Supabase provided bubble tea and pizza for the attendees, afterwards it was time to head to Shiling Night Market for some delicious night snacks!

Learning about Taiwanese Cuisine

On Saturday morning we got together at CookInn Taiwan to learn how to make four traditional Taiwanese dishes/snacks: Xiao Long Bao (Soup Dumplings)、Niu Rou Mian (Braised Beef Noodle Soup)、Seasonal Greens、Bubble Milk Tea!

CookInn provides a fantastic experience for anyone looking to expand their culinary repertoire, with engaging instructors that speak fluent English, and a fun atmosphere, I can highly recommend it!

Exploring Taiwan's Nature

After we've learned about Taiwan's cuisine and treated our bellies to some delicious food, it was time to explore Taiwan's nature. Taipei is nestled in between the mountains, allowing for many great hikes just outside the city. One of the most popular being Elephant Mountain, which is easily accessible from the city center, offering stunning views on Taipei 101 and the entire city.

Elephant Mountain is part of a larger mountain range called "The Four Beasts", allowing you to extend the hike a bit and connect to Songshan Fengtian Temple. Taiwan's Temple are not just a stunning site, they also offer restrooms and water fountains. Taiwan is incredibly convenient. If there isn't a temple in sight, you will very easily find a convenience store, which often also have restrooms. And the Taiwanese people are just incredibly friendly and helpful. Even with the language barrier (which is not as big as you might think), they will go out of their way to help you.

So even if there currently isn't another HackerHouse coming up, I would highly recommend you don't wait, and go visit Taiwan as soon as you can!

Travelling to Kaohsiung

Another thing that is incredibly convenient in Taiwan is their public transportation system. Even though Taipei and Kaohsiung are on complete opposite ends of the island, it only takes about 90 minutes on the Highspeed Rail to get to Kaohsiung.

So come Sunday evening it was time to make our way to Kaohsiung. Getting 30 people onto a train in a foreign country was my biggest concern, but it all turned out so smoothly. We met at Taipei Main Station, loaded up on snacks and bento boxes, and hopped on the train.

The Accommodation

While Taipei can be a bit pricey at times, Kaohsiung has a great selection of budget hotels. To allow for a diverse group of people to join, I opted for a budget hotel close to Love River, but also gave folks the option to choose their own accommodation should they prefer. Having everyone close by made it easy for folks to connect over breakfast and dinner, as well as the short commute to the co-working space.

With the weather still so nice in Kaohsiung, many folks opted for the shared bike system called Ubike, which is another incredibly convenient and cost-efficient way to commute in many larger cities in Taiwan! Did I mention Taiwan was very convenient?

The Workspace

We partnered with Startup Terrace, who drive international startup exchanges and operate office and co-working spaces both in Taipei and Kaohsiung. Veronica Yuting Tsai and her team were incredibly helpful in organizing the space and making sure we had everything we needed.

They also provide soft-landing programs for international companies looking to expand to Taiwan, so if you're interested in doing business in Taiwan, make sure to check them out!

Kaohsiung Developer Meetup

An important part of HackerHouse Taiwan is to connect with the local developer community. So we organized a developer meetup with many talks from local and international speakers.

• Brandon Liu sharing about building open source software as a job in Taiwan.
• Ivan Leo talking about "Taming your LLM Application".
• Victor Kawaguti sharing about the DIGI Gold Card program and how it can help you live and work in Taiwan.
• Mark Birch sharing about the journey of starting a business in Taiwan as a Gold Card holder.
• Vinay Sisodia with a very mathemacial talk about "The different ways we understand and use rotations".
• Divya talking about "Crafting Raft in Elixir: A view of distributed systems through the Elixir Lens".
• Weiting (Andy) Dai, GDG Kaohsiung organizer, sharing about the local developer scene in Kaohsiung.

What's next?

The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, so I really hope I can organize another one in the not too distant future. In the meantime a lot has happened. I've joined ElevenLabs to help build the developer platform for AI Audio, so I'm hoping you're listening to this blogpost through the Audio Native Player with my professional voice clone.

As I'm busy getting up to speed with the new gig, I don't yet know when the next HackerHouse Taiwan will happen, so please bear with me. And who knows, maybe we'll even have some friends from ElevenLabs join next time, seeing that a lot of folks in Taiwan are already using ElevenLabs for their AI Audio needs.

If this is something you'd be keen to help out with, please contact me on Twitter or LinkedIn, or if you're interested in the next edition, please join the mailing list on hackerhousetaiwan.fyi and join the WhatsApp Community, and I hope to see you soon!