Meet the Team: Rigved — Director of Day Of Coordination and Events
It was in the spring of my sophomore year in high school, when I first heard of hackathons. As one of my friends described it, “It’s this awesome competition: you can code, work on hardware, and eat so much free food”. I was sold on the idea on of going and that’s how I ended up at my first hackathon, which was HackRU. The moment I stepped into the venue I was in awe. The place was covered with hundreds of people who were networking, programming, hacking, and innovating. No word could perfectly describe what was happening at that venue in that moment in time except one word: magic. I took my seat, and pulled out my laptop, and decided I was going to make some type of AI game. After writing two lines of code I realized I didn’t know how to code, what I was doing, or what AI even meant.
So for the next 22 hours, I explored the event, met new people, tried out new tech, attended tech talks, played around in the hardware area, and ate free food. I would have been upset that I didn’t make anything my first hackathon, but I was too busy having fun either playing smash, or doing some crazy events that took place. As time went on, I attended more and more hackathons where I picked up and learned new skills.
Shortly, I realized that hackathon hackers were a driven community who attended hackathons for 2 reasons: to learn and to create (some were there for free stuff but let’s not talk about them). It was a common ground for people with different skill sets, and different ideas to come together to innovate. I also learned the greatest way to learn and test out your abilities is by building, whether it be hacking on a micro controller or creating a robot that follows you around and takes pictures (robo-paparazzi).
The beauty of this community is that you never have to tackle problems on your own. There are always mentors, organizers, sponsors, and other hackers around that are willing to offer any help within their ability. These traits are what interested me, and made me want to get increasingly entangled within hackathons.
My involvement with HackRU comes from the pure desire to see growth in the hackathon community. Hackathons are the future, in which any person of any skill level can go to learn or see their ideas and projects come to life. And the Day of Coordination and Events team specifically exists to make sure everything runs smoothly and make sure first time hackers feel included and welcomed into our wonderful hackathon community. As a director along with my team and co-director, Sankeerth, I am able to make sure to plan plenty of events for people who know or do not know how to program, so everyone has a great time at the world’s greatest hackathon. At this HackRU and future hackathons, I make it a personal goal to make everyone feel included and welcomed.
Everyone was at a point where he or she was a beginner, so new hackers please don’t feel intimidated, we don’t byte ;)
Feel free to say hi,
Rigved Tummala
