Organizing Hack Prepas, the first high school Hackathon in Mexico
A little about my crazy year
Last year was very interesting for me in terms of my general growth as a developer. Although I took my first course in programming back in 2013, 2014 is when I first became exposed to Hacking in its prime environment. I’m talking about the traditional Hackathon, of course. As a high school student, I was fortunate enough to make the acquaintance of one of the most outstanding teachers that I’ve ever come across, the co-founder and owner of the company I currently apprentice at.
Between 2013 and 2014, my teacher, who embodies the phrase “going above and beyond” took it upon himself to organize a couple of pseudo-hackathons specifically for our computer science class, made up of between 15–20 tech-obsessed teens who at first knew nothing about the world of Hacking. These Hackathons consisted mainly of us trying to solve Caribbean Online Judge problems strictly with Java, and honestly, it went better than expected. Other than that, there were several workshops with some of my teacher’s co-workers, some of which are now very good friends of mine.
Hackathon 7
A few months into my 4th semester in high school, my teacher came up to the class with an exciting invitation to attend Hackathon 7, the college hackathon organized by students at ITESM, Mexico’s leading university, which my high school branches off of. At first my friends and I were hesitant, as this hackathon was organized mainly for college students who are majoring in computer sciences, and we could barely program in Java. To put it simply, the only reason we were even allowed in was because my teacher knew people in it and there were technically no rules against it (because no one even imagined high school students registering for participation).
Needless to say, my team and I (5 of us) decided staying up for over 24 hours coding was well worth the nerves because we would learn so much about what real hackathons are and what computer science majors do. We participated, staying up all night from saturday to sunday, with the exception of one of my friends who decided to go watch the soccer game (the stadium was within walking distance) that was on that night. Being up all night we couldn’t finish our product, but it wasn’t precisely unexpected as we developed it in a language we learned during the hackathon, and we collectively had like a year in programming experience. In fact, what we did develop went way beyond our expectations, and we came to realize the real power of a well organized hackathon, its creative environment that motivates learning and innovation.
Our Hackathon
After the second private hackathon and Hackathon 7, my teacher and I had a long and serious conversation about the local Hacker scene, which to be honest, left a lot to wish for, especially at the high school level. With that in mind, I rallied up a few of my hacker friends and we set out with the goal of putting together the first official high school level hackathon, which eventually became Hack Prepas.
Despite having two semesters left in high school, we decided to put off planning the Hackathon to my 5th semester in high school so it would happen on my 6th. Being an IB student, I realized 5th semester was the heaviest in terms of assessments, so trying to push it into my schedule would compromise the Hackathon’s quality, which I was entirely against. It turns out waiting for the last minute to organize a hackathon with very little support is a big mistake, but thanks to some hard work we were able to pull everything together and overcome all the obstacles.
Main Challenges and Overcoming Them
Initially we sough the official recognition of our event by Prepa Tec, our high school, because we planned on using the Learning Commons in the school’s library to host the event. Everything went smoothly, and even better, we were encouraged to start a club, which we now call The Devshop, in order to legitimize our organization within the school and therefore our event. This was late December 2014, early January 2015, and we started meeting with the club, which now has more than 20 members. We presented our proposal for the Hackathon to the appropriate authorities and they seemed extremely pleased. Our plans were approved, and the first high school level, overnight, 24 hour hackathon was underway.
Everything seemed fine, and then we realized, we still didn’t have a date. Our school is famous for its overwhelming quantity of extra curricular options. Last year, I believe, there were around 33 different congresses and student association organized events per semester. That’s 33 1–3 day events over the course of 6 months, so yeah, it was jam packed. We approached the appropriate authorities with the intention of setting the date, and despite our best attempts, we couldn’t seem to get a date past two months worth of planning. By this I mean it was mid-January, and the furthest possible date was March 13th. We had no choice but the take the close date and get straight to work. Another challenge was when we were told out of the blue that we couldn’t host an overnight event. So close to the hackathon, we thought about calling everything off, because what’s a hacking marathon without the marathon part? Thankfully, we found our way around it, and with the help of several volunteer teachers who served as chaperones we acquired permission, and we were back on track.
Financing events for around 30 people is no problem, if you have enough time that is. With only a month and a half for us to plan the hackathon, acquiring sponsorships was the main obstacle. We reached out to different organizations and companies, most of which couldn’t help given the timing and how close the event was, mainly because getting sponsorship approval takes time, but also because high school level hackathons were unheard of. It really didn’t surprise me, but Icalia Labs, the company I’m an apprentice at, was the first to come to our aid and offer help. I won’t go into details, but I can say that the disposition with which my co-workers agreed to mentor the hackers and provide support for the event was truly admirable. This is the kind of people that makes communities grow and companies excel, and I’m extremely honored to be a part, however small it may be, of their team. We had un-official help from other organizations, such as the school itself which helped with acquiring food, the mexican branch of the MLH which gave us plenty of pointers and a bit of extra support, and a few other companies. The support of all these companies and their commitment to their social responsibility allowed us to offer participation in the event, with three full meals, completely free of charge.
In the end, everything fell together thanks to my team and I’s hard work and extreme dedication. We had around 50 participantes total, most of which stayed with us during the 24 hour period. We were able to put together three workshops throughout the event, one on Front End Web Development, one on MIT’s AppInventor for Android development, and one on Google’s App Engine, imparted by one of my co-workers form Icalia Labs. To be honest, we didn’t expect much from the hackathon participants in terms of final product quality, as most of these people were high schoolers with little to none development experience. Much to our surprise, we saw hacks of a completely different level, ranging from mobile book-borrowing apps for our school library to 3-D hologram games with actual hardware being built right there in front of us.
Despite the endless phone calls, video chats, google hangouts, and immense amounts of stress, I have nothing but pride and gratitude towards my fellow organizers, the organizations involved in pushing Hack Prepas forward, our school and the hackers that attended for giving me the privilege and honor of making me a part of their hacking experience, giving me a chance to give back to this awesome community, and making me feel like the future of Mexican hacking is in good hands, that is, the hands of people who love it as much as I do, as I can now see that I’m most definitely not alone in this.
