Meet the IvyHacks Team

Published in

IvyHacks

6 min readSep 21, 2020

The last time I checked, the IvyHacks organizational team Slack had more than 100 people. This is a pretty crazy number for any sort of event and certainly the largest I’ve ever worked on for a hackathon. In order to demystify the organizing process and so we’re not some amorphous internet blob, I wanted to take you behind the scenes and tell you a little about the IvyHacks team. Alternatively, you could read this as a guide on how to start your own mini hackathon nation 😜

If anything you read about here sounds interesting, don’t forget to apply at apply.ivyhacks.com by Septemeber 27th (less than a week 👀), check out our website at ivyhacks.com, and subscribe to our page!

💯 The Basics

The organizational team is composed of students from six Ivy League schools: Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, and Princeton (We love Yale and Penn too, but they were busy planning their own awesome hacking events!). Most of us come from the organizational teams of our schools’ independent hackathons, and we are all super excited to combine all the magic from our own distinct events into one huge super hacking extravaganza.

We are then broken down into five organizational teams: Operations, Hacker Experience, Marketing, Sponsorships, and Technology. I talked to members of all the teams to get a little more in depth look at what everyone is working on.

Catherine Yeo, a junior at Harvard and one of the directors of IvyHacks, was part of the team that originated the idea of IvyHacks. She explained, “We thought, there are a lot of virtual hackathons out there; what can we do make this a different experience? How can we take a risk, and what can we do differently to make this the best virtual hackathon experience possible?” Through IvyHacks, she hopes to expand the concept of the traditional in-person college hackathon that is limited by factors such as region, venue, and participant’s time availability.

Catherine particularly emphasized the social impact of IvyHacks. “We are trying to take the barriers away and giving as many hackers as we can access to incredible resources and connections,” she said. “At the core we want to use our massive platform for good to help others work together to solve pressing issues.”

💻 Operations

This is the team that takes care of all the logistics of the hackathon. They set up the beautiful application portal (apply now if you haven’t already), they are working on the virtual platform, and will be figuring out all the nitty gritty logistics!

James Lepone, a junior at Cornell studying information sciences and economics, is working on the Operations Team. He helped deploy the beautiful application portal, and has been working on getting the Discord server set up for the event. He compares his previous experiences organizing in person hackathons, saying, “There is not as much to worry about logistically. You don’t have to worry about reserving rooms, getting EMS people to be on call, getting police to be on call, etc., things you usually have to focus your time on.” He explained, “Now, we’re able to focus on how to use the best technological tools to create a great experience for the hackers.”

Things to look out for from Operations:

Our final round of applications!
Announcements about our virtual platforms (beyond Discord) 👀
Some custom Discord bots to help you with your hackathon needs

😎 Hacker Experience

This is the team focused on making the IvyHacks experience unique, fun, and meaningful! They are bringing you the speakers, the workshops, and, of course, those coveted prizes. They brought you this year’s theme “Building Bridges, Breaking Barriers” (we love that alliteration ❤). Currently, they are hard at work reaching out to speakers and workshop leaders from all over the world and brainstorming ways to help people connect virtually.

Yibing Chen, a junior at Columbia studying Computer Science, is on the Hacker Experience Team. She has been working on reaching out to speakers and with a focus on bringing in international participants and speakers. To her, organizing IvyHacks is a particularly unique experience because she believes the virtual nature of the event will allow us to “realize our goal of connecting people around the world”. She explains, “We have participants signing up from thousand miles away to participate in this shared experience.”

Things to look out for from HX:

The amazing speakers they have lined up, including the CEO of Y Combinator, the President of Rewriting the Code, the CEO of Wikihow, the author of Cracking the Coding/PM Interview, and many more to come!
Unique prizes and prize categories for designers, beginners, PMs, and more
Engaging workshops that will NOT feel like another Zoom lecture

🎨 Marketing and Design

The Marketing and Design team is probably the reason you heard about IvyHacks! The team has an insane variety of talents with video editors, 3D graphics artists, web designers and graphic designers. The beautiful website design and the fun logo were ideated by the marketing team. We are working on content that spans social media from Twitter to Wechat to Facebook.

Miranda Mo is a junior at Brown studying Computer Science. She is the person behind our beautiful website design and all of the 3D graphics. She explains that she chose this style because “3D is more interactive because it is more realistic,” believing it creates a more immersive experience for the hackers. This reflects the goals of the marketing and design team to make the design reflect our theme of unity, and “creating a welcoming environment for anyone who wants to participate in IvyHacks,” according to Miranda.

Things to look out for from Marketing and Design:

Swag giveaways on our social media platforms
More beautiful graphics and designs coming to screens near you
Videos, newsletter blasts, and more surprises. Get hyped!!

🙌 Sponsorships

“Let’s get hackers those stickers!” is a recent comment from the Sponsorship Team’s Slack channel that sums up their job pretty well! These team members have been hard at work contacting corporate sponsors to get you your sweet swag. That’s right, there will be swag! We all know the real reason most of you come to a hackathon is for the swag and that couldn’t happen without the amazing sponsors the team is connecting with! They also will be bringing in engineers and recruiters to help you network to make the job search just a little easier!

Kat Lasonde is a sophomore at Dartmouth working on the Sponsorship Team. She is currently working on reaching out to startups. She is especially excited about IvyHack’s focus on outreach to these types of companies. “I think startups are such a great opportunity to connect with entrepreneurs, who I have a lot of respect for,” she said. “A lot of people at startups are really passionate about what they are doing… They are really interested in making a difference for hackers at IvyHacks.”

Things to look out for from Sponsorships:

A career fair just in time for recruitment season
Basically, everything because we couldn’t pay for anything without this team
Announcements about startups and non-profits we’re partnering with

🌎 Tech

The tech team are our website masters and front-end queens. They have been working on getting the website updated so you have all the latest news about our event!

Things to look out for from Tech:

Our gorgeous website!
Updates about speakers, schedule, and sponsors on the website
The rest of what they are working on so TOP SECRET that they you’ll have to come to our event to find out!

Our whole team is working hard to take advantage of the virtual format and make IvyHacks the best experience any of us have ever planned. “Everyone brings vastly different experiences and ideas with them. I’ve learned a lot from all the teammates I’ve been talking to,” said Catherine Yeo. We can’t wait to show you everything we have been working on when October rolls around, and we hope you have a fun time following along with us until then!

More information about the event can be found on our website and media channels

💻 Website: https://ivyhacks.com

📱 Twitter: @ivyhackathon

📱 Instagram: @ivyhackathon

📱 Facebook: IvyHackathon

🗞️ Newsletter: IvyHackathon.substack.com