Behind nwHacks 2021
The transition of Western Canada’s largest hackathon to an online hacker experience
With 2020 (finally) behind us, we kicked the new year off with the 7th iteration of our largest hackathon — nwHacks 2021! The weekend was filled with various workshops, mini-activities, and of course, amazing projects hacked together in 24 hours. Despite the additional challenge of not being physically present with any of our teammates, it was heartwarming to still see the community come together to do what we love. Hacking!
A lot happened in one weekend and while we weren’t able to document all the minute-by-minute bloopers, here is a recap of the moments we hope you found memorable.✨
nwHacks 2021 by the Numbers
People 🙌
- 1,200 hackers
- 45 mentors
- 12 sponsors and in-kind community supporters
- 50 organizers
Facts 📊
- $90,000+ in prizes 💸
- 10,300 spoken minutes and 13,200 messages sent on discord
- 220 mentor tickets submitted and answered ✅
- 197 projects submitted on Devpost
- 37% were first time hackers 🐣
- 7 workshops
- 1 amazing nwHacks 2021 🎉
nwHacks goes international! 🛫
- Hackers came from 32 different countries including Kenya, United Arab Emirates, Barbados, and Romania 🌎
- 25% were not from Canada
- 44% UBC, 7% SFU, 6% BCIT
A total of ~200 different schools participated! Notable schools include: the National University of Singapore, University of Toronto, Dalhousie University, Ateneo de Manila University, University of Florida, UC Berkeley, and Cornell University
Obviously nwHacks looked like a little different this year, but one thing that always stays the same is the positive energy and the amazing ideas that our hackers bring to our event. I am blown away by the determination and tenacity from everyone to help make a virtual event of this scale a success, despite the global circumstances. Thank you to all of our community, whether you’ve been here since the start or this year was your first nwHacks — hopefully we will see you next year and in-person! — Kevin Zou, nwHacks Logistics Coordinator
Reimagining nwHacks
With the transition from in-person to online, this year’s iteration saw significant changes from how it was held in the past. Logistics such as food and venue became irrelevant while areas like online communication and live streaming saw more focus. Here is an overview of the major changes we made to nwHacks:
Pre-hackathon activities
We decided to run more workshops and mini-activities before the hackathon on an unofficial learn day. This was not only to give our solo hackers an opportunity to find teammates, but also to help hackers focus on their projects! By doing this, we helped tackle the always difficult decision of spending more time programming or attending a workshop.
Communication
Maintaining a line of communication with the hackers this year was particularly challenging — there were no wandering organizers to answer questions, nor was there a mic we could use to get a message heard. Our solution? We documented as much as we could using Notion and stayed connected with our hackers using Discord and a livestream that ran for the entirety of the event.
To handle smaller, repetitive tasks, we improved on the same bot that was used for HackCamp and implemented it for nwHacks. This significantly helped us with duties such as signing hackers in, creating mentor tickets, team formation, and more. Kudos to JP Garcia and Maggie Wang for creating it!
Judging
In order to handle the judging of nearly 200 projects and do so in a timely manner, we added a new peer-to-peer judging stage that was developed in-house. Hackers would log in to their account on our brand new nwHacks live site and judge the projects that were assigned to them. The nwPlus team was diligent in reviewing reports and kept an eye out for cases of unfair grading.
When we were initially scoping out this project, we were optimistic that in-person aspects would be possible
We researched potential venues and brainstormed plans for how we could adopt a hybrid online and in-person model. A fully in-person event was certainly in the back of all our minds as well. However, as Murphy’s law would have it, the pandemic has gone on far longer than any of us had envisioned. Fingers crossed for next year!
Although nwHacks 2021 didn’t look like a regular nwHacks, it definitely felt and ended up being the best and biggest nwHacks I have ever seen. More than any other year, hackers showed their commitment and perseverance to learn new technologies, meet new tech enthusiast, and grow the tech community world wide. With a record number of project submissions, hackers weren’t shy to show their creations, and for that I am grateful. It was a privilege to see everyone’s hard work pay off, including our mentor’s dedication to helping every single hacker, closing over 200 tickets in less than 24 hours! Thank you all for coming to nwHacks 2021, it wouldn’t be the same without each and every one of you! — JP Garcia, nwHacks Director
Let’s revisit the journey!
Friday, January 8th, it’s time for warm-up 🏃♀️🏃♂️
In preparation for a long weekend of hacking, we ran 5 workshops and various activities in between to get hackers mingling! Some of the sessions were recorded and available on our Youtube if you missed out.
Workshops
- What Hiring Managers Look For and Interview Prep with Groundswell
- Intro to APIs with Hootsuite
- How to Succeed At nwHacks by Kevin Wu
- Git 101 by Joice Tang
- Git 201 by JP Garcia and Kevin Zou
Activities
- Various games (Among Us, skribbl.io, etc.) on Discord
- Hacker Speed Dating 👩💻
Saturday, January 9th, and so it begins!
10:30pm Opening Ceremonies officially kicked the event off live on Twitch. Our hosts gave a rundown of the event and then handed the stage to Hootsuite, Groundswell, and Sean from MLH to introduce themselves.
Afterwards, both hackers, as well as mentors, were given a chance to network during our sponsor boothing and mentor networking session. A few coffee chats before hacking begun at 1pm!
1pm Lunchtime with Mark Diego from Groundswell — the importance of building lasting relationships was well emphasized. 👨🏾🤝👨🏼
2:30–5:00pm For the rest of the afternoon it was all eyes on our sponsors! There were Q&A sessions to answer burning questions, a workshop, plus live rounds of Minute to Win It. 🎮
- Data Visualization WORST practices and how to avoid them Workshop with KPMG
- Q&A sessions from Groundswell, Hootsuite, and Deloitte
- Minute to Win It sponsored by Groundswell
8pm-7am The day came to an end with mini-activities from MLH and the nwPlus team. The sessions continued into the late late hours to also give our international hackers an opportunity to connect.
- Jackbox Stream with Jacob Ng
- Chill and Bullet Journal with Carmen Xu & Alex Hernandez
- Slideshow Karaoke with MLH
- Skribbl.io and Online Jigsaw Puzzle with Sophie Berger
Rise and shine, Sunday, January 10th 🌞
Day two started at 9 AM with more activities from our sponsors. Two Q&A sessions and a workshop = more wrinkles added to hackers’ brains 🧠
1pm Projects due! + Lunch stream
1:45pm Our sponsors returned for a second round of boothing, giving hackers one more chance to meet, greet, and get connected.
The event officially came to an end at 3:30 PM: Closing Ceremonies! A round of applause once again to this year’s winners 🎉
- 1st Place — Study Buddy
- 2nd Place — Pandemic Hero
- 3rd Place — Butternut
- Popular Vote — Protect-21, SensiGlove, Talko, Goodgredients
- Groundswell: “Building a ‘Groundswell’ with the power of Salesforce” — Butternut
- Hootsuite: “#SocialForGood Award” — Bump!
- Deloitte: “The Perfect Pitch” — Macaron
- KPMG: “Most Innovative Idea with Data Analysis” — Butternut
- Kabam: “Best UX/UI Design” — Job-Dash
- Best Domain Registered with Domain.com — Find Free Space
- Best use of Google Cloud — Purrtector
- Best Hardware Hack — Pillvisor
All project submissions can be found on our Devpost!
From the planning to the closing ceremony of nwHacks 2021, we made every effort to provide energy and experience similar to an in-person hackathon. And I would love to thank each and every one of you to help us achieve that. This year, joining us from all around the world, our hackers were more active than ever, fostering a safe and supportive environment for learning despite the impact of COVID-19. I hope you met someone, created something, and most importantly, learned something valuable at nwHacks 2021, and see you again next year! — Michelle Kim, nwHacks Logistics Coordinator
Thank you to everyone that has supported us through this year’s nwHacks journey 💖
2020 has undoubtedly been a little different and has had a unique set of challenges, the support we have received has allowed us to continue growing and see such levels of success. A big shoutout to the following:
- Thank you to our amazing sponsors for both the resources and knowledge they bring.
- Our mentors, for taking time out of their weekend to give hackers a helping hand 🤝
- Our panel judges, Dr. Jesus Del Valle, Sushant Bhadkamkar, and Mandy Xiao for judging our finalists
- To the nwPlus team, for their hard work and dedication to make this event happen.
- And lastly, to you, the community! The energy and enthusiasm that everyone brings are, in my opinion, the secret sauce of an awesome hackathon. ✨
nwHacks 2021 by nwPlus UBC. Words by Kevin Wu, with thanks to Victoria Kim, Kevin Zou, and Jacob Ng.
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