The Day Before
Hackathon Insider, Part IV: Logistics
24 hours before PennApps 2015 looks a little bit like this:
8640 bottles of water, 2000 Red Bulls, 1400 plush penguins, 100+ awesome volunteers, and 54 student organizers.
While some of the committees are wrapping up their work in the days leading up to the PennApps, the logistics team is moving into action.
One of the hackathon’s executive organizers, Alex Hu, has been running around all day. It’s his second year working at PennApps, and his previous experience includes everything from coordinating volunteers to sponsorship. “It was a natural progression,” said Alex. “I went from working 24 hours straight as a volunteer during Brynn’s reign before I moved on to the logistics exec.”
According to Alex, the logistics team has three big criteria for a successful hackathon: food, WiFi, and power. But there’s more that goes into it. “There’s a lot of craziness we have to deal with,” Alex told me. “Sponsors needing rooms, furniture arriving two weeks early, health emergencies, and other concerns.”
The scope of their work extends well beyond a traditional job description, and most of it requires quick thinking and a healthy tolerance for manual labor. There’s a lot of heavy lifting involved. A couple dozen cases of soda, water, fruits, and miscellaneous snacks will make their way to Penn’s campus in a little under 24 hours, and countless flights of stairs have to be navigated to address various emergencies throughout the weekend.
Planning takes place months in advance. “I’ve been meeting with EOS (Penn’s Engineering Operation Services) since the end of last PennApps. We’re figuring out what we need: where our WiFi issues are, where various power issues are, and how to make the event more appealing,” said Alex. Running a hackathon is a mix of long-term preparation and fixing short term emergencies, and balancing the two requires a bit of finesse.
Volunteers are a huge part of the PennApps logistics effort. The core team isn’t nearly big enough to serve every meal and staff all of the rooms, so a lot of collaboration takes place between the hackathon and dedicated Penn students. (Huge shout-out to Penn’s chapter of APO, a co-ed volunteer service fraternity, here!)
“I signed up for six hours and I just stayed and stayed and stayed,” said Margaret, a current PennApps organizer and former volunteer, of her first PennApps. “None of the stuff I did was actually fun, but I had fun anyways.”
“We always want to be better organized,” Alex told me. He’s moved from overseeing volunteers to coordinating meals, the expo, and other massive logistical tangles. But his dedication and insistence on quality has remained. “We strive for perfection. Maybe one day we’ll run an event where we can sleep and not be constantly worried,” he said.
But that might be in the distant future. As of writing, Alex and the rest of the logistics team are running around, piecing together the snacks, meals, and t-shirt distribution that’s coming Saturday evening. Running a hackathon is a hard job but, for the organizers, they wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.
Article by Tony Mei. Hackathon Insider takes you behind the scenes of PennApps, one of the nation’s oldest college hackathons.
