Zürich Friends of Haskell

About us

The HaskellerZ meetup group has been around since 2011. After organising many meetups and events, in particular ZuriHac, which attracts people from all over the world, there was a need to formalise our group a bit more.

In the short term, this allows us to work together better with sponsors for ZuriHac. In the long term, however, we would like to guarantee the long-time success of a Zurich-based Haskell interest group, not dependent on one or two key volunteers.

The rules are set up so that we encourage non-monetary contributions (e.g. giving a talk). Of course, membership is optional and not required to attend any of our events.

Become a member!

For members, we ask a yearly contribution of either:

giving at least one talk at the Zurich HaskellerZ meetup,
helping organize ZuriHac in an official role,
serving on the board of directors for the Zurich Friends of Haskell, or
providing other voluntary work asked for by the board of directors.

Occasionally, we reach out to our members with volunteering opportunities. Also, once a year we would send you an email to confirm and update the membership.

HaskellerZ meetups

It is our pleasure to announce that ZuriHac 2025 will take place Saturday 7 June – Monday 9 June 2025 as a physical event at the Rapperswil-Jona campus of the OST Eastern Switzerland University of Applied Sciences.

ZuriHac is the biggest Haskell community event in the world: a completely free, three-day grassroots coding festival co-organized by the Zürich Friends of Haskell and the OST Eastern Switzerland University of Applied Science. It is not your standard conference with papers and presentations, but features fantastic keynotes, hands-on tracks, hacking on many of your favourite projects, and of course lots of socializing!

This year’s keynote speakers currently include Lennart Augustson (current holder of the record for most number of Haskell compiler implementations), Rebecca Skinner (author of “Effective Haskell”), and Brent Yorgey (of “Diagrams” and “Swarm” fame). Further keynote speaker and track announcements will be made on our website. For an idea of what to expect, have a look at last year’s schedule on <https://zfoh.ch/zurihac2024> and a video impression of last year’s event at <https://youtu.be/SMIdDqZxrUk?si=Jvl1LpuanFJHglSC>.

We also welcome beginners or people unfamiliar to Haskell who are curious to learn more. There will be an organised beginners’ track as well as many mentors from the Haskell community happy to answer all your questions.

ZuriHac Prelude: Two days prior to ZuriHac, the Haskell Foundation and OST will organize the Haskell Ecosystem Workshop (HEW) and the Haskell Implementors’ Workshop (HIW - formerly co-located with the ICFP) at the same venue. Details will be posted to the ZuriHac website as they become available.

You can find more information about the event and register at <https://zurihac.info>.

The event is free for participants. This is only possible with the help of our generous supporters, who are currently:

In case you would like to support ZuriHac, as a company or as an individual, please get in touch with us. We would be grateful. Bank details for monetary donations can be found at <https://zfoh.ch/#donations>.

ZuriHac

Our main yearly event is the organisation of ZuriHac, a yearly Haskell Hackathon that attracts over 300 attendees. It is probably one of the oldest and definitely the largest Haskell Hackathon currently in existence.

The first ZuriHac was organised in 2010 at the Zürich Google office by Johan Tibell and Christophe Poucet. Currently, we are organising it at the Rapperswil-Jona campus of OST, with the help of many Zürich Friends of Haskell members and volunteers.

Videos

We try to record all of our meetups and keynotes so Friends of Haskell who are not in the Zürich area can enjoy the content as well.

We have also collected the slides of the presentations in this repository. Unfortunately, the collection is currently incomplete.

Donations

All our events are free to participants. In order to cover our costs, we accept individual donations as well as corporate sponsorships. For more information about sponsorships, please contact us at zurihac@zfoh.ch.