February 19th to 21st, North Campus, University of Michigan
Once we have the inclusive environment for MHacks down, it’s time to sprinkle in the next half of the equation. Don’t be mistaken, this is equally as important. Hacking is more than just sitting down and creating. It’s about helping your fellow hacker. Most importantly, it’s about giving you the tools and encouragement you need to feel as badass as that hack you’re building.
After thinking about how to really improve our mentorship, we came to the simplest solution: you, the hacker. One of the most important things we learned from past MHacks was that one-third of experienced hackers want to mentor others. Since then, we’ve worked our tails off to improve peer mentorship. So we’re setting up an even more robust system to allow attendees to fill the roles of both hacker and mentor.
This starts with having a 4:1 hacker-to-mentor ratio, ensuring that every team has a mentor. We want 80% of our hackers to have reached out to a mentor, whether that be from a sponsor or another hacker. And mentors will reflect our community: a diverse group to work with you, be your role model, not just someone who will talk down to you. To accomplish this, our team is hard at work to build the mentor dream team for you and your fellow hackers. We measure our success by yours; if you succeed in feeling helped, we know we did.
Now, we want new hackers to get as much out of MHacks as their more experienced counterparts. So we’re starting a whole new initiative, How to Hackathon. Before you even step foot at MHacks, we’ll give you all the tools you need to hit the ground running, both on-line and in-person. We’ll also be working on a new team-building and matching program, so you can find, create, and plan a team on your own terms.
During MHacks, you can get help without even leaving your seat. We’re going to make it easier and faster to get help with a real-time help service that connects hackers-to-hackers, mentors-to-mentors, and hackers-to-mentors. There will be more information regarding the system coming later. Along with a ton of mentors, and some awesome chats about what interests you, MHacks: Refactor will be bustling from start to finish.
But what about after MHacks: Refactor? We want to make sure you can keep developing and learning beyond MHacks. So, our workshops on sustaining your work past the hackathon will prepare your hack to make its way into the world. Do you think you think your hack has some market potential? Do you want to build it some more after MHacks: Refactor or even make a new hack? Well fear not! We’re going to help you out, by offering post-MHacks tutorials on just that.
So what do we create when we add the an inclusive community and hacker empowerment? Find out here!
Inclusive Community + Hacker Empowerment = Personal Development
If you want to go back to the start, click here.
Questions? Comments? Concerns? Compliments (we like these!)? Shoot us an email (hackathon@umich.edu), message us on Facebook, DM us on Twitter, or tag us on Instagram!
