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What we think is important at Cal Hacks 2.0
We live in a day and age where college dropout and founders in their early twenties are the darlings of the media. Look at TechCrunch. They swim in heaps of praise when they get into Y Combinator and are romanticized beyond belief when they raise a round of funding. To the youth-obsessed media, every young founder is the next big thing.
What these founders all have in common is that they hack, write code, and build software. Thus, we’re constantly fed this narrative that hacking and entrepreneurship are inextricably linked, like two peas in a pod. Just as the pioneers of the mid-19th century gazed westward at the Gold Rush, eager young programmers look to Silicon Valley.
We’ve been bombarded with this wild narrative that building a hack is somehow linked to building a business. We don’t think that’s true. In fact, we know it’s not true.
There’s something beautiful, magical, elegant, and maybe even peculiar about our curiosity as hackers. If a tree falls down in the middle of a forest and no one hears it, does it really make a sound? We don’t know; it’s an infallible conjecture. But, if the media isn’t drooling over tech and Hackathon Hackers doesn’t exist, are people still coding, building, and creating? Of course they are — that’s what things were like before intercollegiate hackathons became ubiquitous across the country! It’s our curiosity as hackers that drives us. We like tinkering, maybe taking things apart. We hack for the sake of hacking — just look at our Githubs filled with tons of half-finished projects that represent many full days and nights of learning and exploration.
So we, the organizers of Cal Hacks, want to provide to the hackers at Cal Hacks 2.0 whatever tools necessary to build ambitious hacks, whether it be highly technical, or something way out of the blue that hackathons have never seen before. We’ll have cutting-edge hardware for our hackers to play with, thanks to the Invention lab @ CITRIS: laser cutters, 3D scanners, 3D printers, soldering tools, and more. Hardware not your cup of tea? We’ll also have super cool APIs and software such as Unity, Aerospike, Azure, and Moxtra.
In addition, we’re unveiling an exciting mentorship platform.
These full-time engineers and grizzled veterans of hackathons have graciously given us their weekend to be at Cal Hacks to help you learn and build. We’re doing this to create a welcoming environment for hackers on both ends of the hackathon-experience spectrum. Our mentors are passionate about their work and they are here to ensure that technical obstacles do not become insurmountable during your journey to build your dream hack. By Sunday afternoon, you will have magic that you will be proud to show off to others.
What we won’t have are talks on how to start your startup, talks by non-technical CEOs who’ve raised hundreds of millions in the valley, and other fluffy things the word “entrepreneurship” brings to mind.
Gone are the ruffles and frills. Massive cash prizes? Gone. Excruciatingly long “Top 10” final ceremony? Gone. Super long “omg-so-famous-such-celebrity” opening keynote speaker? Gone. Instead, we will have a science fair-esque expo where every hacker will have the chance to showcase what they built over the weekend to everyone at Cal Hacks and around the world via our Meerkat livestream.
At Cal Hacks, we want to see you, the hackers, return to the roots of the hacker community. However, to be specific, we aren’t being nostalgic. We’re being reflective, introspective, and maybe a bit experimental. We’ve cast aside the hype, the startup pipe dreams, the non-essentials — the bullshit. Rather, we’re laser focused on the most essential and important thing to a successful hackathon: how we can cater to YOU, the hacker. To push technical boundaries, to hack for the sake of hacking, to learn new technical skills, and to accomplish the things you wouldn’t be able to do hacking alone in your dorm with your buddy Stack Overflow.
We are so excited to see what you come up with. Join our Cal Hacks 2.0 Attendees Slack here and let’s get back to the hacks.
Much love fam,
the Cal Hacks team
Thanks to the entire Cal Hacks team for not only reading this over, but helping to turn this mission of ours into reality. Also, special thanks to David Bui for the sick cover photo.
