T9Hacks goes to Hackcon IV

Bringing Diversity into the Mix

I remember my first hackathon . . .

The opening ceremonies were an adrenaline-filled prep rally welcoming all of us and energizing the crowd to build great hacks. During team formation I met three other people with a great idea for a social web app. It was 36 hours of frantically coding, learning as much as we could, and building something we could be proud of. After hacking ended, we presented our app to the judges, excited to show-off what we had built. We didn’t place, but we watched the teams who did and were amazed at what they created in so little time.

I remember my first hackathon. At the opening ceremonies one of the presenters said we should invite girls to join our teams because they are better at communicating and design. During team formation I was the only person that was asked “So do you know how to write code?”. After coding ended, a local news site took my picture and put the caption “up-and-coming programmer”. We didn’t place, but I watched the other teams who did: a team of all men, a team with 3 men and 1 woman, an all male team, another all male team, and I wondered why there weren’t more women.

Looking back, I can summarize the weekend into two points:

1. The hackathon experience was incredible. It was a blast having the time and opportunity to develop and create something for fun.
2. The number of women who attended was pretty abysmal.

During Local Hack Day 2015, I saw the same pattern. The hackathon was a blast; I learned a ton and started a great app! But I could count the number of women using both my hands.

The Start of T9Hacks

T9Hacks Team, photo courtesy of The ATLAS Institute

So, a colleague and I had this crazy idea: what if we started our own women’s hackathon? We knew absolutely nothing about organizing a hackathon and had only participated in two hackathons before, but why not? We gathered a team and formed T9Hacks: A women’s hackathon promoting gender diversity in technology. We had support from every instructor, staff member, and administrator in the department. We had students telling us how excited they were to attend months before the hackathon was scheduled. We secured sponsors and reserved the venue. We thought everything was going great . . .

Then we started marketing around campus and to the computing community.

“Why do you need to have a women’s hackathon in the first place?”

“Won’t women just enter a male-dominated field anyway?”

“I didn’t need anyone to push me into computer science, I pursued it on my own, why can’t they?”

“Isn’t that reverse-sexism?”

“I’m not saying this is bad, but it seems unnecessary to me.”

And that is when we learned that not everyone was as supportive to promoting gender diversity as we were. But we dug in and T9Hacks persevered.

We started listing why a women’s hackathon was necessary by showing statistics on our website: 26% of IT positions are held by women, 18% of computing degrees are earned by women, and only 10% of hackathon participants are women. We changed the way we marketed ourselves. We discussed that “women’s hackathon” didn’t mean “male-excluding”. We focused our hackathon on creating and building, not malicious hacking. We used inclusive language for beginners from all groups. We made sure to highlight that no programming experience was required. We welcomed all women who wanted to participate.

And then we hosted an AWESOME hackathon.

The Next Chapter

The T9 team went through trial by fire and survived without any third degree burns. We are proud of what we accomplished and now I want to learn more about what other teams have done. I want to go to Hackcon and be surrounded by other student organizers who walked the same path and hear about what they achieved. There is a ton T9Hacks can do to improve, and I hope Hackcon will give me great ideas for our next iteration.

I’m also excited to come and learn more about how other organizers structured their hackathons. How did they decide on venue, judging, prizes, theme? Our team was faced with so many challenges and choices when planning; I’m curious to know what decisions other organizers made and how they handled the same issues. What worked? What didn’t? What will they do differently in the future?

Planning a hackathon takes so much time and effort–we all have something that drives us towards THAT weekend and I’m eager to learn what motivates other organizers. The T9 team was motivated by issues of gender equality to create a safe space for all students who wanted to participate. Everyone attending Hackcon will be coming from a different perspective and I’m really interested in hearing about other people’s stories and the path they took.

I’m really looking forward to Hackcon IV, and I’m thrilled to be able meet so many people who are as passionate about hackathons as I am!

Brittany Kos is the founder and organizer of T9Hacks at the University of Colorado, Boulder, as well as a PHD Student at the ATLAS Institute.

Hackcon is the official hackathon organizers’ conference, full of workshops, talks, and community bonding. This year, it will take place in Estes Park, Colorado on June 24–26.