Comedy Hack Day DC (CHD DC) is a comedy hackathon on Friday, October 23rd and Saturday October 24th. This is the first DC version of Comedy Hack Day, a national event launched by Cultivated Wit, a company started by former employees of The Onion. The group has already done nine successful events in LA, San Francisco, New York and at MIT over the last three years. This past spring, they launched a program for individuals to run their own local CHD and CHD DC is the second locally-run event in the country.

Our event begins on Friday night at Canvas Co/Work in Dupont Circle with software developers, designers and comedians gathering to pitch funny new apps and tech ideas. They then form teams and "hack" all night and all day Saturday, creating functioning products and presentations to showcase them. The teams then present their ideas to a live audience on Saturday night at iStrategy Labs in Shaw in a comedy show format. The evening is complete with hosts, guest judges from the tech and comedy communities, food, drinks, music and prizes. In total, there will be approximately (10) 4-person teams of "hackers" and 100 attendees for the live event. It’s a unique and hilarious way to showcase bright and funny DC talent while also bringing together two of the city’s most active communities that don’t often overlap: tech and comedy.

Cultivated Wit has laid the foundation for a creative and uproariously entertaining event. And though there may be plans for future funding, the group does not currently provide financial backing for these local events. But fortunately DC has the opportunity to inject its own homegrown humor, ingenuity and interminability into an affair that is proven to be fun and exciting. While giving area residents something new and different, CHD DC also aims to further the continued rise of both the tech and comedy scenes, lending to the effort of making DC less of a career stopover town and more of a destination city.