Hello World! My name is Hakatana, and I'm a college student who moonlights as a hacker, organizer, and coach in the hackathon community. Over the past four or so years, the hackathon community has had a dramatic impact on my life, allowing me to gain better perspective and new insights on my hobbies and passions. Because of that, it's my job to try and brainwash convince you that hackathons are the best thing in the world and that you should definitely attend them every weekend.
Anyways, my first ever hackathon was one called HackNA in late 2017, at a high school north of Pittsburgh. To be honest, I only went because I didn't have much going on that weekend and figured it would be a fun event. While I went in with absolutely no experience, my team and I ended up making a Flappy Bird clone that we could be proud of, and I learned a lot of new programming skills that weekend. It wouldn't be nearly the last hackathon I attended though - not by a long shot.
Come Fall 2018, I was in college and heard about HackPSU, and that I could get extra credit to go. I immediately signed my roommate and I up and dragged him along to the event the next weekend, where we actually managed to team up with two other people to win a prize for our hack that turned images into haikus. What a strange hack to win a prize for... but then again, a picture is worth a thousand words or some such, right?
At hackathons, you really get immersed into a community of people just like yourself. Fellow geeks, nerds, and programmers looking for the "next big thing" to learn about, ideate around, and build on. It's an amazing environment to be in; you're so much more motivated to innovate and create than you would be in any other environment. With people to bounce ideas off of, help you when you're stuck, and give you honest feedback on your work, it's almost the ideal place for hacking - which is why it's called a hackathon, I guess.
I got addicted to hackathons, even going so far as to travel to Philly for PennApps and to Maryland for Bitcamp in Fall 2019. I also became an organizer, applying for and getting onto HackPSU's organizing team in early spring of 2019, directly after I earned a prize at my first one. Getting to help make the magic happen, so to speak, was really fun in a different way than participating. I got to help code the website and attendance system for HackPSU, as well as coordinating the event logistics, networking with sponsors and participants to make sure they had the best experience possible.
Of course, naturally, the next step was to apply for a job with the biggest hackathon league in the world: Major League Hacking. I quit as an organizer with HackPSU when the pandemic hit in Spring 2020 due to "directional differences" (fancy speak for me wanting to do stuff they didn't really vibe with) and quickly applied for a coach position with MLH, looking forward to ascending yet another level in the hackathon world and getting to work with events besides my own. Of course, not everything goes the way you'd like it to, and I got rejected after the third round - I had better stuff to put my time towards anyways, so it was no big loss.
I kept up my trend of attending hackathons, which were online at this point, and either mentored or volunteered at them, trying to gain more experience helping and teaching others at the events, rather than hacking or organizing like I had done so far. Turns out that helping others build a winning project isn't as fulfilling as building one yourself, but it's still pretty satisfying to see an event you helped organize come together.
I ended up re-applying to be a coach in November 2020 and actually somehow getting hired, which was cool, I guess. I just finished my first cohort hackathon last week (HackDavis over at UC Davis) and have a couple more hackathons scheduled that I'm coaching. Coaching is definitely way cooler than organizing or mentoring since you get to be the "cool kid" to the hackers and help them have a good time at the event, and with way less pressure on you to boot. I'm really enjoying it, but sometimes, I wish I'd spent more time just being a hacker.
Either way, I'd like to go back to being "just" a hacker someday but since I'm already deep into coaching and organizing, that's not really something I can do. Looking back, though, my time in the hacker community has impacted me a lot. It's opened my eyes to the levels of creativity and innovation that are possible when people work together, and it's inspired me to pursue a career in an impactful field where I can help others out every single day.
So I guess the moral of the story is: go to a hackathon sometime! You might enjoy it. They're events full of innovation and talent, and you'll almost never not be inspired by something you see there. I love them, and you might too.
See ya at a hackathon!
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By the way, while you're here, watch my completely unrelated video on how terrible Amazon is:
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