My First Hackathon: Toni Au — Director of Food
Last summer, I was debating whether or not to switch out of cell biology and neuroscience for computer science when Carlin — one of the current executive directors for HackRU — introduced me to the concept of hackathons. At first, the idea of a 24-hour coding event sounded like a there a lot of B.O. throughout a long sleepless night; at the same time though, it did sound like a lot of fun! You had a choice in what project you could work on. You had a choice in what technologies you would use, unlike in classes where we’re confined to a specific language (-cough C-). The concept was cool, but at the time, I didn’t really think much about actually going.
One weekend in April, after much persuasion, Carlin dragged me out of my little College Ave apartment to my first hackathon. It was HackPSU Spring 2016 at Penn State. Having just switched to Computer Science, it was definitely intimidating and a little overwhelming being surrounded by what seemed to be a sea of hackathon veterans. Everywhere I went, people were throwing around all these terms that I thought I was supposed to know. Like, what is this, “AWS”? Nevertheless, I was stuck in Pennsylvania so I figured I might as well at least try to build something that weekend. My team and I ended up building an app called waRung, a caffeine consumption tracker that was supposed to aid in battling caffeine addiction. We incorporated the Muse, a headband-like device that can measure the brain’s alpha waves to test for levels of concentration. It was my first time doing a hardware hack, and the first time I ever built an Android app. The project wasn’t perfect — there were certains functionalities we were not able to implement, and quite a few bugs in the code. Yet, I was still proud of what we were able to accomplish. I was really happy to have gotten some experience in mobile development, which is something I wanted to learn more of but never had the chance; but I also got a lot better at Stackoverflow-ing my problems! Most importantly, we invested so much into this project in a such a short amount of time…you couldn’t help feeling a little proud of what was accomplished. That should be enough to celebrate.
Since HackPSU, I’ve been to a lot of hackathons and dabbled in new tech, ranging from Ionic framework to Alexa. Additionally, I have had the opportunity to lead the Food team for the past two HackRU’s. My involvement as a hackathon participant and organizer introduced me to the local and greater hackathon community, and it’s one that I am so thankful to have been a part of during my undergraduate career. Even when there are days that I feel like I don’t belong in tech, the friends I have made through this community are always been there to support me. It’s sometimes crazy to think that I went from attending my first hackathon just last year, to leading an entire team, to getting a chance to go to Denver for Hackcon (Major League Hacking’s hackathon organizers’ conference), to being where I am now. The journey was and is tough, but incredibly worth it.
The biggest thing I learned from my first hackathon was that it’s fine if you don’t finish your project, or if you’re project is still buggy and not perfect. As long as you just try your best and be open to new things, in the end it will have been a weekend well spent. Besides that, my advice to newcomers is definitely — DON’T BE INTIMIDATED AND DON’T BE AFRAID TO TRY! Especially being a woman who recently switched over to computer science from CBN, even if others try to question your capabilities or motives, don’t be afraid, be upfront and honest.
Ask questions. Get help. Build awesome things. Hackathons are meant for exploring, so find a free weekend and take the adventure.
Toni Au is the Director of Food for HackRU XII. She is a senior at Rutgers University, majoring in computer science with a minor in biology. She credits Neopets for introducing her to coding back in <marquee>2004</marquee>.
