Meet the Team: Brandon Yu — Director of Day Of Coordination and Events
How I got Started
It’s the midst of my junior year in high school in the early months of 2014. I’m currently taking AP Computer Science, the first year my school offered it. A friend of mine suggested that I should go to this thing called a ‘hackathon’, so we decided to get a small team together and travel to New York City to attend CodeDay New York. For 24 hours, my team worked on this iPhone app, a gesture-based magic fighting game, and all I did was the artwork.
Yes, I didn’t code anything at my first hackathon. However, I had a blast in the 24 hours I was there from eating free food, having a good time with my friends, meeting new people, and being in the city. I figured, “I enjoyed this so I’m going to keep going to these and maybe I’ll actually code and learn a bunch of new things”.
Where I am now
I’m now a freshman at Rutgers University. I’ve been to about 19 hackathons (as of publishing this), been an organizer for various hackathons, and have loved almost every moment of them.
Hackathons have made a significant impact to my life. Before hackathons, I wasn’t too loud or social. However, hackathons sort of force the opposite when finding team members, working with a team, presenting a project, or when you’re approached by organizers and sponsors. Going to and organizing these events have given me numerous opportunities to improve my social and public speaking skills. Along with that, each hackathon is an entire weekend dedicated to coding. I’ve grown so much as a person and a developer over the last couple of years because of everything hackathons have to offer. I believe other people can benefit from hackathons like I have so I have a strong passion for bringing these events into people’s lives.
HackRU
Before college, I was already helping organize for a couple of hackathons, so naturally, I wanted to help organize for the amazing hackathon that my university, which I will be attending for 4 years, hosts. If you’re a Rutgers student, it’s not too difficult to get involved. You just have to find out when meetings are, maybe get in touch with the organizers, then actually go to the meetings. That’s what I did. From there, I helped organize and volunteer for the Fall 2015 HackRU.
The internal HackRU team last semester wasn’t exactly the most organized. I wanted to have a larger part at my school’s hackathon and help improve the organization and environment of the hackathon.
My Role
As a director of the Day Of team, I can directly plan all of the awesome things that are happening at HackRU. My codirector, Rigved, and I work with our team to plan out all the events that we want to happen, build the schedule for the entire weekend, and work out the behind the scenes. During HackRU, we’re going to be running around hosting and making sure all of our events are running smoothly. So if you have any questions about the schedule or events during HackRU, I’m one of the people to go to!
At this HackRU, and the following ones, I want all hackers to feel welcomed. I want hackers to meet new people, learn new things, and have a good time; perhaps new doors will be opened for them. These are my hopes for HackRU.
— Brandon Yu
