No country compute for old men
No ComputeFor Old Men
One day. Twelve businesses. All the compute in the room. Hackers bring a laptop and the AI subscription they already pay for, businesses bring the problem they cannot solve, and we point one at the other for a day.
Cloud spend wasted since you opened this page
$0
Source: Harness, 2025
- Saturday 13 March 2027
- The Old Truman Brewery, Brick Lane
- Free entry · reserve a place
to ship something real
invited, vetted, paying
in one room, one Saturday
cost, to anyone, ever
The premise
“There is a colossal amount of computing power sitting around doing absolutely nothing.”
Typical provisioned cloud spend
29% wasted
Half the cloud you pay for is asleep. The other half is running a dashboard nobody has opened since Q3. Meanwhile the bakery on the corner is quoting jobs from a spreadsheet held together by hope.
No Compute For Old Men puts to work what is already in the room — the laptops, the AI subscriptions nobody is getting full value from, the spare credits that came with them — and points it at businesses that need it. Not at another growth-hacked app. At a real problem with a real invoice attached.
0%
of IT leaders reckon they waste more than half their cloud spend
VMware Private Cloud Outlook, 2025 ↗For businesses
Bring us your worst software
You run a real business. Somewhere in it there is a process that eats an afternoon a week, a spreadsheet held together by one person's memory, or a tool you pay for monthly and resent daily. Bring that.
It costs you nothing
No fee, no invoice, no retainer. Sponsors fund the room; the hackers turn up with the compute.
You keep everything
Code, designs, credentials, repos. Handed over at the end of the day, MIT licensed.
Pitched in three minutes
You get the room at 08:45. Explain the problem, the teams pick the fights they want.
Workable by Monday
You leave with a working prototype and a written handover, not a slide deck.
One team, minimum
At least four engineers on your problem for the full day. Usually more.
You're on the record
We film the demos. Good for business, better for the story you tell customers.
An example shortlist
Made up, for now. Yours could be next.
A family fruit-and-veg wholesaler
Order book arrives as 200 WhatsApp messages by 5am. Two people retype them into three systems before the vans leave.
Then we build
Message-to-order pipeline with a human approval queue and one clean dispatch sheet.
A South London plumbing outfit
Quotes are built in Word, priced from memory, and sent from four different phones.
Then we build
Quote builder with a parts price list, branded PDFs and a shared job board.
A Hackney bike repair shop
400 bikes a year checked in on paper tickets. Customers phone constantly to ask if it is ready.
Then we build
Repair tracking with automated SMS updates and a one-page daily workshop view.
A twelve-person design studio
Studio capacity, holiday and billable hours live in three spreadsheets nobody trusts.
Then we build
Single resourcing board with hours, leave and project burn in one place.
A four-site restaurant group
Rota is rebuilt by hand every week. Swap requests happen in a group chat that nobody searches.
Then we build
Rota planner with availability, swaps and wage-cost preview per site.
A refugee support charity
Case notes scattered across inboxes, shared drives and one heroic volunteer's laptop.
Then we build
Consent-aware case management with offline mode and an audit trail.
Six examples, picked to show the range. We want twelve on the day.
For hackers
Bring a laptop,
leave a legend
You have the skills, a laptop, and an AI subscription you are not getting your money's worth out of. Bring all three. Somewhere there is a business owner who will remember the day a stranger fixed the thing that has been ruining their week for four years. That is the whole pitch.
➜ whoami
hacker, allegedly — full-stack, two years tired
➜ ls ~/surplus-compute
macbook-pro claude-pro.sub 38-api-credit
➜ ncfom bring ~/surplus-compute --for-the-day
bringing: laptop, Claude Pro, 38 credits. that'll do.
➜ ncfom find --problem "quotes built in word"
12 briefs matched. pick the one that annoys you.
➜ ncfom build --deadline 18:30 --owner-on-standby
team formed: 5. scope cut: twice. shipping.
➜ ▌
demos 19:00 · bar 20:30 · nothing to prove but everything to fix
Free food, all day
Coffee from 08:00, proper lunch, dinner, and a bar that the sponsors are paying for.
Bring the compute you pay for
Your laptop, your Claude or ChatGPT subscription, the API credits you bought and never burned. You build on your own accounts — nobody shares logins. If you run short, credits donated by cloud and model sponsors are handed out in the room. A spare GPU is a bonus, not a prerequisite.
Pick your own fight
Hear twelve pitches, choose the one that annoys you most, then form a team around it.
Mentors on tap
Staff and principal engineers from the sponsor pool, circulating all afternoon.
Ship it for real
Deploy to the business's own machine before you go home. No mock-ups, no vapourware.
Prizes with taste
Judged on impact, not polish. Hardware, credits, and a ridiculous trophy.
Your name on it
Every team gets credited in the handover doc, the recap film and whatever the business tells their customers.
Nothing to sign
No NDA theatre, no claim on your side projects. Show up, build the thing, hand it over, go to the pub.
The day
One Saturday,
start to finish
Doors
08:00
Curfew
Late
- 08:00
Doors, coffee, reconnaissance
Badge on, coffee in hand, read the twelve problem briefs pinned to the wall before anyone tells you what to think.
- 08:45
The pitches
Twelve businesses, three minutes each, strictly timed. No slides. Just the problem and what it costs them.
- 09:45
Team forming
Claim a problem, build a crew of four to eight, name yourselves something regrettable.
- 10:15
Build
Scoping, then shipping. Mentors circulate. You have eight hours and a working relationship to protect.
- 13:00
Lunch, sponsored
Eat properly. The afternoon is long and the last hour is always the hardest.
- 16:00
Hard checkpoint
Ship freeze is in four hours and the business owner is watching. Cut the scope, keep the thing that matters.
- 18:30
Ship freeze
Whatever works now is what you demo. Push to the business's environment, write the handover doc.
- 19:00
Demos
Five minutes per team, on the big screen, in front of everyone including the owner whose week you just fixed.
- 20:30
Prizes, pints, aftermath
Judges speak, trophies are handed out, the bar stays open until they make us leave.
Sponsors
Fund the dust-up
There is no rate card. Sponsors cover the room, the food, the bar and the compute credits we hand out on the day — and in return they get their name next to something that genuinely worked. No lead-gen theatre, no badge scanning, no keynote about synergy.
Tell us what you can put in and we will find the best use for it. Cash is the least interesting thing on the list.
The room
The venue, staging, the bar, and the compute credits we hand out on the day.
- Headline billing on everything
- Keynote slot at the pitches
- Two judging seats
- Ten hacker tickets
- Logo on the trophy
The day
Lunch for everyone, coffee from 08:00, and the screens the demos run on.
- Main-stage logo placement
- One judging seat
- Four hacker tickets
- Mentor slot in the room
The tail
Swag, prizes, accessibility, and the hundred small things nobody budgets for.
- Logo on the site and the wall
- Two hacker tickets
- Our genuine affection
Questions
Straight answers
Still unsure? Email howdy@nocomputeforoldmen.com and a human will reply, probably within the day.
01Do I need a ticket to get in?
Yes. Entry is free, but the room holds 140 people and there are no tickets on the door, so reserve a place in advance. Businesses apply and are selected against the briefs; hackers claim a ticket, first come, first served.
02Is it genuinely free?
Genuinely. Businesses pay nothing, hackers pay nothing, there is no paid tier, no upsell and no charge for the recordings. Sponsors and donated compute cover the whole day. The ticket is so we know who is coming and can plan the food, not so we can charge you.
03What counts as a business that needs help?
Any small or mid-sized company with a real operational problem and the authority to describe it. Ten to two hundred people is the sweet spot. You do not need to be technical, and there is no such thing as too boring.
04Can my business apply if we already have a dev team?
Yes. Plenty of teams use the day for the backlog item that has been deprioritised for three years straight. Your engineers are welcome in the room with us.
05Do I need to be a senior engineer to take part?
No. We want designers, product people, data folks, ops people and plain good communicators. Teams are deliberately mixed, and every team has at least one person who has shipped to production before.
06What happens to the code we build?
The business owns it outright and it is handed over under an MIT licence at the end of the night. You keep the story, the photographs and the right to be insufferable about it on LinkedIn.
07Whose compute are we actually using?
Mostly what people already have. Everyone turns up with a laptop and the AI subscription or API credits they were paying for anyway, and build on their own accounts for the day. On top of that we hand out credits and accounts donated by cloud and model sponsors, so if your own run dry you are not stuck. A few people bring a spare GPU or a cloud allowance they never touched, which is a bonus rather than a requirement. If your company is sitting on capacity it will never use, we will happily take it off your hands.
08Do you film and photograph the day?
Yes. Demos, pitches and the room are filmed for the recap. We ask for consent on the day and offer an opt-out wristband that we actually respect.
09What if my business is not selected?
You join the waitlist for the next edition and we send you the recordings and briefs anyway. If your problem is small enough for one evening, our community channel will usually have a go at it.
10Is the venue accessible?
Step-free access, accessible toilets and a quiet room are available. Tell us what you need when you apply and we will sort it, quietly.
11What is the code of conduct?
The standard one, enforced without negotiation. Be decent, take the work seriously and the people kindly. Anyone asked to leave leaves.
Take part
Get in
the room
12 business slots and 140 hacker tickets, saturday 13 march 2027 at The Old Truman Brewery, Brick Lane. Free, sponsored, and over in a day.
- Where
- The Old Truman Brewery, Brick Lane
- When
- Saturday 13 March 2027
- Cost
- Free entry · reserve a place
- Reply by
- 28 February 2027