A recap of HackNYU 2019

Highlights from the event, and the first in a series of posts about HackNYU 2019.

From February 15th to 17th, we hosted HackNYU 2019 at NYU Tandon School of Engineering, the 6th iteration of NYU’s annual hackathon. Over 500 participants came together to build projects around our four themes: Health and Well-being, Sustainability, Education, and Financial Empowerment. Some came from as far as Canada and Ohio!

The event was the result of months of hard work and preparation from the whole committee, culminating in an amazing event that was our largest ever.

Here are some highlights from this year’s event:

Our fearless leader giving the opening presentation.

HackNYU by the Numbers

We’ve grown a lot since we started. Some quick stats about HackNYU 2019:

• 520 participants
• 2106 submitted applications (up 78% from last year)
• 103 project submissions (up 18%)

Left: Participants filing into the gym; Right: Teams prepare to give their presentations.

Website

the beautiful site the day after the event

This year, the HackNYU tech team developed an entirely new application system and website, using TypeScript, React, JSS, and Firebase. Firebase was incredibly useful for hosting and authentication.

Check in ticket QR code

Our homegrown system allowed us to be in control of our data, our registration and check-in flow, and helped drive our massive increase in visibility and application submission. Check-in was greatly streamlined with our custom QR code based solution.

The source code for our site is completely open source under a permissive MIT License.

Activities

We had the honor of having a number of workshops from our sponsors: IBM, Google, NYU IT, and Contrary Capital, not only teaching hackers a range of new technologies (Google Cloud, IBM Node-RED, NYU API use), but also bringing ideas to market and product design.

In addition to workshops, an important part of the HackNYU experience are the non hack related activities to help hackers step away from their computer screens, including a cup stacking tournament and slideshow karaoke (hosted by MLH).

MLH hosted slideshow karaoke.

Our most popular activities this year were the midnight ping pong and pool tournaments, and our signature cupcake decorating:

A lot of cupcakes…

There were some crazy designs, and a lot of cupcakes eaten. Too many to show all of them!

Even more cupcakes…

My personal favorite event, a last minute addition this year, was meditation and face masks. Thanks to a great deal for face masks on Amazon (endorsed by head honcho Srishti) and guided meditation app Headspace, hackers were able to both unwind and get glowy skin late on a Saturday night.

a last minute addition; excuse the very unprofessional profile picture!

We did face masks (and meditation)!

Projects

Project judging underway…

We had the most submissions of any HackNYU this year, which was incredibly exciting. We can’t thank our onsite mentors and sponsors enough for helping our hackers get to the finish line! After plenty of judging and deliberation, our judges selected the following track winners:

A couple of our winning teams, including a repeat winner (Hi Janice!)

Financial Empowerment

1. Wallet Worth
2. Down to Dine
3. Subtrakt

Sustainability

1. Sustainify
2. Smokey the Bear
3. Blank Side

Health and Well-Being

1. Smart ML
2. Clear Spend
3. Shift Assist

Education

1. Panwo
2. AR Book World, Mega.me (tied)
3. Verbal Coding

One of my personal favorites was Panwo, an Arduino based accessible musical device with haptic feedback, and our winner for the education track. The team created a great video of putting together the project:

Panwo video (from Devpost)

Check out our Devpost page for more details on all the winners and submissions.

Thank you!

Helping organize this event was an incredible experience. Working on the site, chatting with hackers late at night, seeing the final projects at the expo, and even cleaning up the mess afterwards; I’m glad I took part in it all. Special shout out to Walter, an organizer who stayed up late and worked through his birthday for the event!

Thanks to our sponsors, volunteers, mentors, organizers, facility staff, NYU, and of course our hackers for making this wonderful event possible. We hope to see you next year at HackNYU 2020. See all the photos from this year on our Facebook page (and give us a like).

We’re going to be posting more in the coming weeks about lessons learned from HackNYU 2019, and how we plan to improve for next year.

Interested in joining the HackNYU organizing team? Sign up for our mailing list to be notified when applications open.

Some of the organizers after the event (a bunch were at home sleeping after overnight shifts).

Michael is co-chair of the HackNYU 2019 Tech Team, and current junior studying CS and Math at NYU. Photos by Jonathan Philip.