On November 8th, hundreds of eager minds lined the atrium of the Friend Center at Princeton University, ready to dedicate the next 48 hours to making their dreams a reality. HackPrinceton would provide the venue, the resources, and the mentors; the students the hard work and talent. And It. Was. Amazing.

For out of this hackathon came gold: products such as Artemis, which, based off a six second video of a face, can accurately compute breathing rate, pulse, and blood flow; or Piano Stairs, which transforms any flight of stairs into a working piano. Perhaps the most innovative of all was CheapMotion, which takes the camera on any iPhone and turns it into a 3D motion controller.

By far, though, the most interesting, the most prolific, and the successful of all was What Would I Say, a Markov Bot that breathes new life into old Facebook statuses, meshing words and phrases into a witty phrase that sounds just like the user. Generating over 2,000,000 hits on their website in the course of 5 days, What Would I Say has gone viral with users all over the world.

The creators of the app say it best. Ugne Klibaite, a graduate student here at Princeton, said, “we always wanted to invent this, or start a business that would make life easier. But it was always just fun talk. HackPrinceton gave us something concrete to plan around, and we decided to try to make something out of it”.

Attributing much of their success to HackPrinceton, Pawel Przytycki, another founder of What Would I Say, further notes, “due to server costs, we would have had to shut down the site. But the hackathon supplied us with Amazon Web Credits, which has allowed us to keep the site up and running.”

Looking at the event and the recognition from everyone it has generated in the past few weeks, including people from outside of the tech scene, it is quite easy to say that HackPrinceton has become one of the prominent events of its type. Hansen Qian, one of the directors of HackPrinceton, noted, “we’ve received so many compliments in the past few weeks: students telling us it was the best weekend they’ve spent all year, that they have learned so much and really enjoyed the environment, and that the event was so well managed and organized despite its magnitude.”

Stephanie He, the other director, further explained, “companies have also realized this too [sic] and have reached out, seeing if we were holding a spring hackathon and have displayed interest in being a part of such an event.” She cited that a representative from Bloomberg had said, “the event was a grand success, congratulations! My team and I both said it was the best organized hackathon we’ve been to yet!” She continued to say, “we were so excited with the turnout this year and the type of responses that we’ve received that we’re pleased to announce that we’re holding an awesome spring hackthon!”

And awesome it will be. I had a chance to personally visit the hackathon, and I was impressed with the grandeur of it all. Hundreds of people, all focused around their projects, lines of code displayed on screens and wires and pieces of hardware in all directions. When I talked to some of the hackers, they had told me that they hadn’t slept since the day before, yet their excitement and energy could not be contained as they happily jabbered about their work. The atmosphere was electrifying, and everybody was so enthralled by what they and the teams next to them were doing that I soon found myself caught in all the action. It was amazing to think that I was walking among some of America’s best and brightest, and that some of these people would become the next big innovators and leaders of our country. The potential in those buildings was mind-blowingly high, and I was honored to be considered a part of it all.

When I heard about the grand prize, an offer to come to StartEngine, an accelerator, over the summer to work with mentors and professional advisors to develop their idea into a feasible business, I was blown away. Looking back, however, it is a prize most befitting to the quality and caliber of an event such as HackPrinceton.

I left HackPrinceton changed, my eyes opened to a world so much more impressive and engaging than the one I had lived within. So to all you collegiate innovators: I urge you to come to HackPrinceton. It is one of the events that have truly changed how I have viewed my peers: I’ve seen the potential they have, and HackPrinceton has been organized in such a fashion that it really is the breeding grounds for the next big thing. I personally guarantee that you will have the time of your lives, and you will leave being changed as I did. Come with your ideas, come with your energy, and come experience history with us at HackPrinceton. I promise you won’t regret it.