I wonder what the value is of having it in NYC (or SFBA) vs. somewhere else, ideally cheap and with minimal distractions, like a university campus over the summer.
Also wonder if there's a good argument for doing a non-US hacker school to solve visa issues -- is there anything going on like this in China now? India?
There are a ton of interesting tech things going on in NYC. General Assembly runs events and classes, AlleyNYC similar, WeWork Labs has cheap office space for startups, New Work Labs has a free night, NY Gaming Meetup, multiple competing Java Meetups with technical presentations; group coding; networking, NY Tech meetup, User Experience Meetup, iPhone meetup with tons of people advertising gigs and looking, ad startups offering above even NYC rates to get people into a distasteful subject - and those are just the things I've encountered personally.
Honestly, if someone going to school meets a more established opportunity to work at a real startup or with a real company with a production product, then I think that's a good distraction anyway, since they'll move on to the real deal, instead of just working on educational open source projects, and really start their career.
Also wonder if there's a good argument for doing a non-US hacker school to solve visa issues -- is there anything going on like this in China now? India?