Behind UBC Local Hack Day 2019: Build Day
The numbers, highlights, and experiences behind nwPlus’s biggest UBC Local Hack Day event to date.
On November 30th, 2019, 411 hackers from around the Lower Mainland woke up bright and early to attend UBC Local Hack Day 2019: Build Day powered by TTT Studios. Build Day is the 12-hour hackathon and flagship event of UBC Local Hack Day 2019, which expanded this year to include Learn Day, Build Day, and Share Day over the span of the 2019/2020 season.
Good things come in three’s and in this case, three events means that UBC Local Hack Day can promote its theme of diversity, inclusivity, and accessibility all year round. ⚡️
The numbers behind Build Day:
743 registered with Major League Hacking 👌
411 checked-in to the event — our biggest Local Hack Day event to date 🎉
55 teams of hackers submitted a project to Devpost 👩💻 👨💻
40 organizers from the nwPlus team 🌟
12 sponsors and in-kind partners 💖
$75 donated to charity 👫
27 Slack contests 🎉
1 amazing day of hacking, food, and innovation 🔥
What’s new this Build Day powered by TTT Studios?
Bigger and better 🙌
After spending the first 3 years of its life at the Hugh Dempster Pavillion and doubling our expected turnout in 2018, it was clear that a bigger venue was required to support this growth. This year, we were delighted to host our flagship event at the UBC Life Building.
Not only is the UBC Life Building a beautiful and spacious new venue, it lets hackers innovate and work together in the same open space — a feature that nwHacks, the nwPlus season’s flagship event featuring 700+ hackers and 28 sponsors from around the world, is known and praised for having.
Back by popular demand: nwPlus-run workshops! ⚙
On October 5th, 2019, we ran our first Learn Day: a day-long tech conference jam-packed with workshops ran by our very own nwPlus members. Due to the overwhelming success of the workshops, we decided to reprise and introduce new workshops for our Build Day attendees!
We were proud to reprise Learn Day’s Git with Gitkraken workshop by John Song, followed by a brand new Python Web App with Flask workshop by Jacky Zhao and a tutorial on Winning Demos by Anne Guo.
You get a demo! You get a demo! Everybody gets a demo! 🚩
With last year’s UBC Local Hack Day attracting twice as many attendees as expected, demos needed to run concurrently in 2 different lecture halls. This meant that hackers were only able to see half of the demos from the day.
This year, we introduced fair-style demos in the UBC Life Building so everybody gets a chance to demo and watch other people’s demos. This style of demo is also less nerve wracking than speaking at the front of a lecture hall!
At UBC LHD: Build Day powered by TTT Studios,
9:00am Sign-in 🌞
9:45am Opening Ceremonies 🎤
10:15am Team Formation + Hacking Begins! 🔨
10:15am Workshop: Learn Git with GitKraken by John Song (Reprise from Learn Day) 🐙
- Read more about John’s workshop in our Learn Day article!
11:30am Workshop: Python: Building a web app with Flask by Jacky Zhao 🐍
1:00pm Lunch Break: Bahn mis from Ba Le 🥖
5:00pm Tutorial: Pitch Perfect: A Tutorial on Winning Demos by Anne Guo 👔
7:00pm Dinner Break: Chinese Food from Kent’s Kitchen 🍚
7:30pm Projects are due, and Science-fair-style Judging begins! 🗣
- Check out the final projects on Devpost!
9:00pm Finalists demo, Closing Ceremonies and Awards 🏆
- Our panel judges Anthony Chu, Chris Hobbs, Cinda Heeren, and Jonas Bausch helped decide the winners!
Check out our winners! 🏅
- 1st Place: Helping Hand
- 2nd Place: super-warm
- 3rd Place: Banking on Food
- Learn Merit Prize: MentrMatchr
- Build Merit Prize: InternationalExchange
- Share Merit Prize: MentorMe
As a beginner-friendly hackathon, we use prizes to celebrate hackers’ learning and ideas instead of treating it like a competition. For our Learn, Build, and Share Merit prizes, participants wrote about how their experience at Build day demonstrated Local Hack Day’s values!
Shoutout to everyone for making this possible 🙏
Thanks to our amazing sponsors 💕
Our photographers 📸
We’d like to thank Alvin, Enis, and Kelvin from AMS Spotlight for capturing moments from the day. Check out all of our event photos here!
And everyone else 😊
On behalf of the nwPlus team, we’d like to thank all of our hackers, judges, mentors, and everyone in between for helping make this year’s UBC Local Hack Day event the biggest one ever! We hope to see you at our future nwPlus and Local Hack Day events!
See you at Share Day! 👋
UBC Local Hack Day 2019 by nwPlus UBC, Words by Anita Tse
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