Community Spotlight: Behind the hackers of nwHacks 2020
Sharing the stories of diversity from hackers at nwHacks 2020
Whether it’s nwHacks, UBC Local Hack Day, or cmd-f, diversity and inclusivity is something that we are committed to embracing across each of our hackathons at nwPlus. We firmly believe that anyone can participate in hackathons — regardless of your experiences, what you study, or where you’re from.
Every year, hackers from a wide range of backgrounds, skill levels, and cities come together at nwHacks for one common goal: to celebrate the learning, building, and sharing of technologies together. In this article, we’ll be highlighting some of the inspiring stories hackers have shared with us at nwHacks 2020 for our Community Spotlight series, retelling some of their first hackathon experiences and why they love participating in them.
Andy Zhao — High School Student @ Burnaby North Secondary
“In high school, I found a group of friends who were also into coding, and one day we decided to go to our first hackathon together. Although it was a really small event, it felt really cool to be able to create a project in such a short time, and from then I was hooked. We kept looking for more hackathons and discovered nwHacks — going to an event with 700 people is so much more lively than one with 80 people, which I thought was really cool and amazing.
I kept looking for more opportunities like this and thought, “Why aren’t there more opportunities like this for high school students?”, and so I decided to create vhHacks. My aim for vhHacks is to bring hackathons to a younger audience. I know a lot of really talented students who would be great at hackathons but just don’t know about them. Since most large hackathons were application based, we wanted to build a beginner level hackathon where high school students could mingle with each other without feeling afraid or outclassed by university students.”
— Andy Zhao, Grade 12 Student @ Burnaby North Secondary School
Chanbin Lee — Cognitive Systems Major @ UBC
“I’ve always wanted to attend a hackathon but was a bit too scared to participate in one. Last year, I finally went to my first one (shoutout to DubHacks), and loved it! For the most part, I’m still learning a lot of things and I’m confused 99% of the time, but I realized that the second time around it just gets a lot easier and you know what to expect.
There are so many things to do at a hackathon like talking to people about your project, listening about theirs, attending workshops, playing games to learning about something you’ve never seen before. Hope everyone has been having fun and my team will meet you at demos! Happy hacking.”
— Chanbin Lee, Cognitive Systems Major @ University of British Columbia
Tsu Yuan — Computer Science Major @ UBC
“When I went to my first hackathon, I had no experience in coding at all — I just went because everyone was going and I wanted to check things out. After I went, I was shocked; the amount of knowledge that flew around overwhelmed me. Even though I felt really behind, I felt that I learned so much from that hackathon (more than I had ever learned in a real classroom). After I spent a year grinding to make my coding skills better, I went to another hackathon where I had my confidence demolished again because everyone else also got way better. But, this doesn’t discourage me. In fact, it makes me want to go to more hackathons because it pushes me to become better and better, plus it’s really cool to see all the projects people make!”
— Tsu Yuan, Computer Science Major @ University of British Columbia
Harsha Srikara — CS & Statistics Major @ University of Texas, Dallas
“Our hack is going pretty well. We had a good foundation idea and one of the things we definitely agreed on was that we wanted to do something new.
We have all done web development before but we wanted to pick up a new framework and use this hackathon as a way to kickstart learning something different. So we chose react and for the past 2 hours I’ve been watching react tutorials with everyone else”
— Harsha Srikara, Computer Science and Statistics Major @ University of Texas at Dallas
William Wakefield — Applied Mathematics and Computer Science @ Kettering University, Michigan
“I’m an organizer for KUHacks, the first hackathon ever in Flint, Michigan. The theme of our hackathon is to help the community especially since there’s the water crisis along with many other different problems.
My biggest achievement at HackMIT was my hack called the Water Crusader Project working with 3 other ladies and IBM Watson, where we were able to predict when water pipes corrode or break. We got 2nd place overall at the hackathon and won a partnership with IBM and $2000 dollar grant to get the project going.”
— William Wakefield, Applied Mathematics and Computer Science Major @ Kettering University
Matthew Davison —Electrical Engineering Major @ UBC
“nwHacks is a hackathon I’ve heard about ever since I first got into engineering. This is actually my first time attending the event, as my interests are transitioning more into software development from electrical engineering.
For my project I’m planning on utilizing both of these disciplines, by integrating the Raspberry PI and piCamera with the Google Cloud Platform!”
— Matthew Davison, Electrical Engineering Major @ University of British Columbia
Nandini Bulusu — Geological Engineering Major @ UBC
“nwHacks was the second hackathon I went to, back in 2017 — so this is my third time here! I think I initially heard about nwHacks on Facebook. I had one hackathon experience previously which I did terribly on, and so for me, nwHacks was a chance to redeem myself, and I ended up really enjoying the hackathon experience here.
Ever since then, I take the opportunity to go to as many hackathons as I can.”
— Nandini Bulusu, Geological Engineering Major and Computer Science Minor @ University of British Columbia
These are just a few of the hacker stories that have inspired us to continue striving for diversity and inclusivity at each of our hackathons. Read more stories from hackers, as well as mentors and volunteers, across our different hackathons in our Community Spotlight series on Facebook!
This initiative would not have been possible without Anita Tse, who helped to collect and transcribe these inspiring stories to share with our hackathon community.
Stay tuned to hear more from our nwPlus community! 👋
— Words by Rebecca Xie, Marketing Director 2020/2021
Have an inspiring story you would like to share with the nwPlus Community?
Tell us your story at marketing@nwplus.io to have your story featured in our Community Spotlight series!
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