Welcome Back!
“The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” — Nelson Mandela
In honor of this quote, and the start of another chapter here at Freetail Hackers, we’ve decided to restart the blog! It has been a considerable *checks notes* 6 years *checks notes again in disbelief* yeah 6 years since our previous post so it seems like introductions are in order.
Hello, I am Aditya Agrawal. I am the Internal VP of Freetail Hackers. The VP role is part of a new structure we are trying out this year, forgoing the traditional 2 co-president structure. Instead, we have opted for 1 president and 2 VPs. Our President is none other than the great Linh Vu, who was also our Eventum Director last year. Lastly, our External VP is Jeongwoo (Jon) Choi.
Now wait a minute, you may be wondering what “eventum” is. Eventum, or formally known as Event/Experience, is a new team focused on hacker experience. In previous years, the workload on the logistics team was so much that hacker experience was often sacrificed. Last year, we ran Eventum as a trial and kept it for this year due to its success. Eventum focuses on day-of attendee experience while logistics focuses on the bigger picture items such as food, venue, and transportation. Fun fact, we came up with the name during Wacode 2022 when the team met for the first time!
For some previous members of Freetail, the question on your minds must be: what happened to the Innovation Team? And the truth is we don’t really know.
So speaking of teams, here are all the directors:
- Corporate: Adit Pareek
- Creative: Ben Sciliano
- Eventum: Omar Abouelazm
- Logistics: Maansi Chodavarapu
- Outreach: Rachel Huang
- Tech: Daniel Ting
Before I talk about upcoming events, I want to recap HackTX 2022! I want to share with you that HackTX turned 10 last year! It was a terrific success with Shristi Chitlangia and Ben Taylor as co-presidents. We were able to host 600 Hackers all in the GDC. Everyone loved the Indian food we were able to cater (shoutout Maansi), and overall it was a great recovery from the struggles of the Pandemic.
In the one week (yes I know I’m terrified), we are currently planning our spring hackathon: Hack The Future (https://freetailhackers.com/hack-the-future) which will be on March 3rd — 4th. We are super excited for it. It will be limited to 200 hackers, UT Austin students, with a major focus on beginners, and a sustainability theme!
Looking ahead, you can expect to see posts from me, Jon, and anyone else who decides to pick up the pen. We are very excited for this upcoming year, and have a lot of big plans that we’d love to share with y’all!
P.S. If yall want to keep in touch with our more recent updates be sure to check out our Instagram.
P.P.S. A sneak peak of one of the many things we’re working towards can be seen through rodeo.freetailhackers.com. It is currently just a registration portal (yes this does mean we have said farewell to our very much beloved Quill, Pepper, and Nucleus…) and soon to be much more. Stay tuned for many more updates!
