Computer whiz kids from colleges across the country are preparing to eat, sleep and breathe programming to turn their ideas into technological realities.
This weekend, the University will host Louisiana’s first student hackathon called GeauxHack—an event where student programmers and designers from across the country will gather to spend 24 hours working on creative collaborations.
There are 229 students from more than 100 universities registered to participate. According to the GeauxHack official website, the event is open to experienced programmers as well as novices.
Major League Hacking co-founder Jonathan Gottfried said many students are drawn to hackathons because they provide an opportunity to apply skills learned in the classroom without the pressure of receiving a grade.
“They’re getting to build what they’re passionate about and what they’re interested in and getting to share it with a community of their peers,” Gottfried said.
Hackathons have been popular within the professional programming community for many years but have only become popular among students within the last few years. Almost every college student owns a laptop and has access to a good internet connection, making it easier than ever to conduct these events, Gottfried said.
GeauxHack was organized by sophomore computer science majors Howard Wang and Samantha Fadrigalan and sanctioned by Major League Hacking, the official student hackathon league.
During his freshman year, Wang travelled to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he attended his first hackathon and fell in love with the community and experience.
“It really reminded me why I wanted to go into computer science in the first place,” Wang said. “All you really need is a laptop and you can do whatever you like.”
After returning to the University and struggling to find more local hackathons, Wang mentioned the idea of starting a University hackathon to friends.
Wang, Fadrigalan and their friends are members of the College of Engineering’s Society of Peer Mentors. With the support of their organizational supervisors, Wang and Fadrigalan took the reigns as co-chairs and made GeauxHack a reality.
Gottfried said it was just a matter of time before individuals like Wang and Fadrigalan came along to get a hackathon established in Louisiana. Rather than being behind the times, Gottfried said Louisiana is at the forefront of expansion, having missed only two Major League Hacking seasons.
Wang said some hackathon creations even grow to become companies.
“I think that every engineering student should be involved in hackathons and embrace the hackathon culture because it allows them to use what they learn in class every day to create a product for themselves that they can call their own,” Wang said.
Wang and Gottfried said hackathons provide a valuable opportunity to network within the hackathon community as well as with industry professionals.
“Companies kind of realized that this is where a lot of very, very smart and talented people were going to build things, and that could be an important recruiting channel for them,” Gottfried said.
While he said it would be difficult to make GeauxHack a seasonal event because he does not want to overextend sponsor resources, Wang is still hopeful it will become an annual event.