Reflecting back at Hack the North 2016
It is an honour to have participated in Hack the North at the University of Waterloo this year. For those who do not know, Hack the North is the largest hackathon in Canada! You can either work alone or up to a group of 4 creating something awesome within a short amount of time. Over a 1000 hackers from all over the world attended this awesome 36 hour event.
If you are interested in the statistics, Andy Yang of 500px tweeted this:
This is my second ever hackathon I have ever attended, and let me tell you, there is a good reason why Hack the North is one of the best hackathons in the world! To name a few, great sponsors, a very well organized event, and good food (I was surprised there was no pizza). This year, I was able to represent my school, Queen’s University, along with a few of my friends as my “hackmates”. For two of my hackmates, this is their first ever hackathon! Like myself, they were very excited to start hacking right away! During this, we heard about some of the cool applications that were built at last year’s event, and Vinod Khosla, founder of Kholsa Ventures, was brought in to speak to the crowd. Throughout his talk, there was one thing he said that really motivated me throughout the event:
Whatever you do, you cannot expect to get it right on the first try. Keep trying, and you will get it eventually.
With the hackathon officially in session, my team and I went straight to work on our hack. Our hack this year involved using Canada’s Open Data API, Yelp API, and machine learning to create “GitActive”. GitActive is an application designed to help people meet friends in their area who share a similar interest in pick-up sports. GitActive has three user options: it allows you to either create, view, or join a sporting event in a park near you, meeting friends in your area who also want to participate. We decided to implement machine learning to predict and create future events, as taking the first step in initiating an activity is often the hardest part.
As I mentioned earlier, this is two of my hackmates’ first hackathon, so they came to learn about some new and different aspects of computing. Our team did not really care if we win or not, all we care about is being innovative and to try something new. This is why I love hackathons! It is an environment, where you focus and learn new things in a short amount of time, and meet fellow peers who share the same interests as you. For me, my end goal is to learn machine learning, and get it to work for our hack. I failed at times, but each failure allows me to succeed even further.
When we were not hacking, we were either sleeping (you can sleep in hotels, but it cost money. Take my advice sleep on three chairs), waiting outside for BeaverTails at 3:30am, taking photos at the photo booth or grabbing the almost unlimited supply of snacks. There’s also the cup stacking competition, yoga, pet therapy, and late night workshops such as machine learning at 1am, and learning how to use PagerDuty API at 3am. One memorable thing I saw, was someone dressing up as Darth Vader from Star Wars with a blue lightsaber chilling around a couple of the sponsor booth.
As the end of the hackathon approached, I was able to get my machine learning algorithm to run perfectly, but due to complications and a severe time crunch, we could not attach it to our hack. Regardless, I am still proud of my team and the hack we put together in 36 hours. We all learned something new, had a lot of fun, and got awesome swag from the great sponsors that were at the event.
At the end of the hacking (post-submission to DevPost), I asked one of my teammates, Brooke, what she thought of her first experience:
“I think it is a really awesome experience for all people with different skill level and interests. I was really intimidated at first as you see some of the previous projects in the past… but you learn a lot especially when it is not coming from the traditional classroom setting.”
Sitting across from my team’s table, are also first time hackers from Western University. Unlike the traditional hacker studying Computer Science, a majority of their team are non-CS majors! I asked one of them, Xin Yue from Western University about her experience, and this is what she has to say:
“It was interesting, it is a different atmosphere and sometimes you lose scope of why you are doing it at all… like what is the end goal and why am I doing this especially at 3am in the morning…”
Next I asked her: Will you be willing to attend any more hackathons? Her answer? YES!
As this potentially could be my last year attending hackathons as a student, Hack the North will definitely be one of the highlights of my university career. To readers who have never attended a hackathon before, please apply to as many future hackathons as you can!
I would like to thank the Hack the North team, and Major League Hacking for creating this awesome event, and the University of Waterloo for hosting over 1000 hackers! To sum it up, hackathons to me are,
A great event to learn things under a short amount of time, while being able to bond with others to create something innovative at 3am.
