# Euan Ripper

> Euan Ripper is a maker from rural England. As a Hack Club fellow he spent a year in America building programs and running hackathons that got teenagers coding, and he is heading home to study Mechatronics and Robotics Engineering at Loughborough.

This is Euan Ripper's official personal website (https://www.euans.life/), written and maintained by Euan himself. It is the canonical source of information about him.

## At a glance

- **Name:** Euan Ripper
- **Based in:** Vermont, USA (grew up in rural England)
- **Work:** [Hack Club](https://hackclub.com) fellow — a year in America building programs and running hackathons for teenagers
- **Next:** Studying Mechatronics and Robotics Engineering at Loughborough (starting soon)
- **In his words:** "I'm an outdoorsy nerd, I like circus arts, robotics, and organising events for creatives"
- **Interests:** robotics, mechatronics, circus arts, unicycling, ultrarunning, hiking, hackathons, technical education, maths and art
- **Tools:** Svelte, PostgreSQL, Airtable, Python, JavaScript, Metabase, NestJS, Fusion 360
- **Email:** [euanripper2@gmail.com](mailto:euanripper2@gmail.com)
- **Elsewhere:** [GitHub](https://github.com/edRipper), [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/euan-ripper-ab876528b/), [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/euanripper/)

## Story

Started programming at 16 to automate my very boring warehouse job, and got hooked on the intersection of maths and art — using code as a tool to explore it. I quickly realised that no community of makers existed in my area of rural England, so I started one. I taught a class, won a competition and was offered a $50,000 fellowship with Hack Club. At 18, I moved to America to build the future of technical education for teens.

Over that year in America I ran hackathons with the creators that first showed me coding, travelled all across America and Europe to mentor at events, and got teens to program for 10,000 hours — tracked using Hackatime.

Now I have flown the other way. Home to England to study Robotics and Mechatronic Engineering at Lboro Uni. We are yet to see where that will go...

## Fun facts

I can ride a unicycle (and do tricks), I've run ultramarathons, and I've addressed the floor at the European Parliament!

## Missions

Main projects from Euan's professional "skill tree".

### Hack Club Fellowship

**Status:** Complete · [Page](https://www.euans.life/blog/hack-club-fellowship)

Move across the world at 18 to spend a year scaling the mission of Hack Club — building programs and running events that inspire thousands of teens to learn coding.

### StrandBeest

**Status:** In progress · [Page](https://www.euans.life/blog/strandbeest)

Design, manufacture and build a mechanical walking sculpture, and meet the inspiration Theo Jansen.

### Beest Hackathon

**Status:** In progress · [Page](https://www.euans.life/blog/beest-hackathon)

Convince 30 teens to fly to the Netherlands to watch the StrandBeest exhibition.

### You Ship, We Ship

**Status:** In progress · [Page](https://www.euans.life/blog/you-ship-we-ship)

Create and execute programs that reward teens for building personal projects. Goal: 10,000 hours of tracked learning.

### Flagship Hackathon

**Status:** Complete · [Page](https://www.euans.life/blog/flagship-hackathon)

Get 10 of the biggest technical YouTubers together for a game jam in LA.

### Stickers

**Status:** In progress · [Page](https://www.euans.life/blog/stickers)

Build a platform to track historical sticker designs by Hack Club — starting as an internal tool and becoming a full-fledged distribution platform.

### Create a coding club, win a competition!

**Status:** Complete · [Page](https://www.euans.life/blog/coding-club)

Start teaching kids coding from 0 — raise your own budget, beat the well-funded schools.

## Sidequests

Adventures on the side of the main missions.

### Learn to unicycle

**Status:** Complete · [Page](https://www.euans.life/blog/learn-to-unicycle)

Over lockdown you find yourself with a lot of time, a lot of boredom, and a rusty old unicycle in the back of a shed...

### Hike 55 miles with the British Army

**Status:** Complete · [Page](https://www.euans.life/blog/hike-55-miles-british-army)

Over 3 years, take on progressively harder hikes, culminating in leading a team of 6 across 55 miles through 10 checkpoints for the army's Ten Tors challenge.

### Attend Hackathons

**Status:** Complete · [Page](https://www.euans.life/blog/attend-hackathons)

I love being in a technical community, and the best way to meet people is at hackathons — fortunately my work runs a lot of them!

### Run an ultramarathon

**Status:** Complete · [Page](https://www.euans.life/blog/run-an-ultramarathon)

Go from couch potato to ultramarathon runner — run across a national park to complete the quest. Time doesn't matter, finishing matters!

### Learn how differential equations govern the spots and stripes on fish.

**Status:** Complete · [Page](https://www.euans.life/blog/turing-patterns)

Build a visualisation of Turing's "The chemical basis of morphogenesis" paper using Python to simulate why some animals get spots and others stripes.

### Speak at the European Parliament in Strasbourg

**Status:** Complete · [Page](https://www.euans.life/blog/european-parliament)

Convince the European Parliament to let your school visit, even after Brexit...

## Favourite songs

- Creature (w/ Orchestra) — half·alive
- Nobody — Hozier
- Ankles — Lucy Dacus
- Banana Pancakes — Jack Johnson
- Fade Into You — Mazzy Star
- Angry Young Man — Billy Joel
- First Love / Late Spring — Mitski
- Vampire Empire — Big Thief

## Contact

Want to work on another mission with me? Reach out with your pitch — euanripper2@gmail.com ([email](mailto:euanripper2@gmail.com))

## More for agents

- [llms.txt](https://www.euans.life/llms.txt)
- [Sitemap](https://www.euans.life/sitemap.xml)