HackMIT ‘14 Recap

It’s honestly still hard to imagine that a few weeks ago, we were scrambling around a vacant Johnson Ice Rink, putting tables and chairs in place, cutting sheets of butcher paper, and stuffing swag bags like there was no tomorrow. All at once, our 8+ months of organizing this crazy 30-hour event have ended.

Flashback to April earlier this year: I was still a somewhat clueless freshman trying to figure out what to do at MIT. Somehow, I also had to help direct one of the largest hackathons in the nation.

Before we dove in, our team took a step back and asked ourselves, what would make HackMIT “a hackathon like none other”? How could we appeal to a wide audience and make HackMIT valuable for all attendees, no matter what their background?

This summer, the whole team dedicated hundreds of hours of their time to organizing HackMIT. From reserving spaces on MIT’s campus and contacting sponsors, to building the registration portal and creating marketing materials, every single person did their part on the team. I remember 18-way phone calls at crazy hours for members in China, Singapore, and Istanbul. For me, personally, I had to balance my summer internship at Facebook with directing HackMIT, and sometimes it felt like I had two full time jobs.

But soon the summer was over, and before we knew it the school year was about to start. The reality really hit me one week before the event; we had one week to make this the best weekend ever for 1000 hackers.

Swagbag sweatshop to stuff over 1000 bags

We found ourselves unofficially living in 5–23x, our war room, rather than our dorms. Every night, we ordered copious amounts of Asian takeout and froyo to keep ourselves sane and satiated. By Thursday, we had taken over Johnson Ice Rink to set up all the tables, chairs, snacks, switches, and routers. On Friday night, we made our own assembly line of “swag bag stuffers” to streamline the process of stuffing over 1000 bags full of goodies.

The next thing we knew, it was Saturday morning, and HackMIT was happening. It was 6am, and I crawled out of bed, chugged some coffee, and made my way to the check-in tent to help organize the check-in process. As people started checking in, they made their way to Kresge Auditorium for the opening ceremony.

Opening ceremony at HackMIT ‘14

We had the privilege of having Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of reddit and a Y-Combinator partner, and Adora Cheung, co-founder and CEO of Homejoy, as our two opening speakers. Alexis and Adora both shared their stories of successes and failures as cofounders of reddit and Homejoy respectively. Their keynotes were then followed by a series of 30-second API “lightning pitches” from our many sponsors.

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Once the opening ceremony ended, hacking began in the main arena. In the meantime, we ran a team formation event and beginner workshops on topics ranging from web development to iOS development and design.

Later in the evening, there were also a series of tech talks with our Platinum sponsors, Uber, Google, and Amadeus. We also organized fireside chats with Jeremy Rossman and Ishaan Gulrajani, former MIT students and founders of Y Combinator-backed companies, Baris Yuksel, senior software engineer at Google, and Stephen Wolfram, founder of Wolfram Research.

There was a continuous stream of hackers that came to our “SnackMIT” snack bar to grab refreshments. To help hackers relax, we arranged for around 200 attendees to receive massages that evening. Many hackers also amused themselves with our wacky photobooth. If you took a photo, find and tag yourself in our Facebook album! As you can see below, the freshmen on the HackMIT organizing team had some mid-event fun:

As midnight approached, we had midnight Insomnia cookies and milk to satiate the hungry hackers. Many hackers also joined us on a midnight walk along the beautiful Charles River that borders Cambridge and Boston.

The next morning, we had “science-fair” style judging where judges from both industry and academia walked around to talk to hackers at their tables about their projects. There were so many amazing projects at HackMIT this year, and it was really hard for us to narrow it down to the top 16 and then the top 8. The top 8 then had to face our panel of esteemed judges, John Maeda, KPCB Fellow and former RISD President, Paula Long, CEO/co-founder of DataGravity, Adora Cheung, CEO/co-founder of Homejoy, and Ishaan Gulrajani, co-founder of Watchsend.

Here are the final winners:

First place went to the team BeaverDash which comprised of Connor Duffy, Phoebe Cai, Mitchell Gu, and Jiahao Li, second place went to Caitlin McDonald and Erin Hoffman from the team HopScotch, and third place went to Yasyf Mohamedali for the app Controlio.

If you want to learn more about judging and prizes at HackMIT ‘14, read this article written by my fellow organizer Aneesh Agrawal!

Overall, I had a great time organizing HackMIT, and I cannot wait to help direct next year’s HackMIT as well. I have had the privilege of being on the HackMIT organizing team for my entire two years at MIT, and it’s really the team that makes me love doing what I am doing. Even though it might sound unpleasant to have meetings at the break of dawn, expected email response times of less than 2 minutes, and ridiculous amounts of work on top of MIT’s grueling academics, I really love being a part of this organization and being surrounded by such driven individuals.

I want to give some shoutouts (in no particular order!), because each person contributed significantly to HackMIT’s success:

• Michael Holachek — Thanks for all the fun that came with CatMIT and being so on top of every package that was delivered to us! You are a logistics mastermind.
• Nalini Singh — I can’t even imagine how many points of contact you dealt with from hosts to air mattress companies to bus points from 6 different schools — thanks for all your hard work!
• David Zhang — Glad we got such a funny yet composed MC this year. You always bring a lot of fun to our team!
• Iris Fung — Likewise with Michael, I cannot imagine the logistics behind HackMIT to run so smoothly without all of your effort in space reservation. Thanks so much!
• Benjamin Chan — I was so excited when I saw the first HackMIT posterboard being put up. Thanks for all of your lovely designs and sticker/tshirt creations!
• Jessica Li — Thanks so much for always being eager to help and bringing some awesome companies to HackMIT this year.
• Barbie Duckworth — I have always appreciated all that you do for HackMIT. Thanks for coordinating all of the volunteers and helpdesk!
• Edwin Zhang — That front end though. Thanks for the jokes and late nights that your provide to the team. (But do get sleep!)
• Anubhav Jain — Thanks for always providing great insight during team discussions and for the great API directory for the hackers!
• Kate Yu — Thanks for always keeping the team on the edge of their seats and pushing people to keep working harder. Also: All. Those. Sponsors.
• Bruno Faviero — You always have such funny emails to the team. Thanks for all the hard work you put for corporate relations.
• Aneesh Agrawal — I know being dev head is not an easy undertaking, so thank you for all that you do for the team.
• Jessica Wang — Honestly, everything was so so pretty this year (*_*) And it’s all thanks to your wonderful designs. Thanks for being so on top of everything you do.
• Anish Athalye — Thanks for stepping up to the plate when we needed it with the check-in system. I’m looking forward to more of what you bring to dev.
• Carlos Henriquez — Thanks for always being willing to do so much for the team already. I’m also looking forward to more what you will bring.
• Kimberli Zhong — Thanks for your eagerness to do more for the team. The workshops wouldn’t have been as awesome as they were without you.
• Rajeev Parvathala — Thanks for volunteering to take point on things that you may not be used to doing! Team formation and hardware supply were fantastic.
• Jack Serrino — You say you’re no front end master, but thanks for building that awesome prototype day-of page.
• Zareen Choudhury — Thanks for diving straight into corporate relations and being so on top of things!
• Maggie Pan — Thanks for being so on top of the press situation and putting yourself as point on the numerous tasks we had!
• Sabrina Lui — Thanks for all that you did for the buses and judging. I always appreciate your enthusiasm to do more!
• Jane Fessenden — Sometimes it’s the little things that count, and all the photobooth and fireside chat decorations made HackMIT a better experience.
• Rachel Wang — Thanks for always giving me great advice in how I can improve my leadership. I am always looking for ways to improve, and I appreciate it.
• Ankush Gupta — Thanks for keeping Katie and I in check with things and always giving great insight before we make decisions. It’s always fun to have you around!
• Richard Ni — I have a lot to learn from you, and having you on the team has been a blast. And copious amounts of mafia :P
• Katie Siegel — Thanks for being a role model to me. I still find it insane how you do so much for HackMIT while you have so much else going on in your life. Thanks for all that you have taught me. ☺

This year’s team has been phenomenal, and we hope you had as much fun at HackMIT 2014 as we had planning it.

Watch out for us next year at HackMIT 2015. ☺