A few weekends ago, I had the incredible opportunity to participate in PennApps, the largest student hackathon in the country, at Penn State University, and it was a BLAST.
To those of you who don’t know what a hackathon is, basically you’re given a certain amount of time to make something. In our case, we had Friday, Saturday, and Sunday to build a working software application using technologies from companies like Venmo, Google, Twilio, Microsoft, Apple, SoundCloud, Dropbox, and more.
My team consisted of all Iowa State students; we were the first Iowa State team to ever be accepted and attend the hackathon! We flew out early on Friday to their campus, and navigated our way with signs like these:
Once we got on campus, we registered and got assigned tables for the weekend. There were tons of companies there who had technical mentors nearby for us to ask questions, and one company even took over a classroom and built a whole lounge for us to hang out on breaks! And then, CODING. Throughout the weekend we were fed and worked from way before dawn til way past dusk. One thing about weekend hackathons: you usually don’t get your normal sleep hours (I slept maybe 3 hours the first night on the floor, and less than that the second night on a table).
My team made a universal uploader for SoundCloud, you can check out our demo here! I made the user interface (the look and feel of the application), and my genius team members built out the backend for us to be able to upload to SoundCloud from SkyDrive, Dropbox, Google Drive, and more!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4NkIiGN6EU
After hours upon hours of grueling, but fun work, we demoed in the gigantic gym on campus (funnily enough I slept on that same gym floor for a couple hours Friday night…):
Our team was among 200 talented teams (over 1000 students) who had made everything from new texting apps to bitcoin exchangers to games to gyroscope extensions. It was awesome to see all the creativity flowing and the fast-paced energy around us.
All in all, we didn’t win, which is totally okay. We made an application I’m proud of, I got to see a lot of old friends from previous internships and events, we networked with companies, and we learned a ton!! I loved representing Iowa State there, it was fun hearing all the different places people had come from.
I’m hoping to do some more hackathons as the school year progresses, but until then, I’ll be busy with school and making up for sleep. ;)
Until next time!
Cassidy
Cassidy Williams is in her senior year at Iowa State University and she’s kind of a big deal. As the only undergraduate student selected to participate in British Airways’ UnGrounded Hackathon, she was also a member of the Hackathon’s winning team who presented their solution at the G8 Innovation Conference and the Decide Now Act Summit. On top of that, Cassidy is an intern working on front-end development for Intuit this summer and is on her way to designing apps for Google Glass. Cassidy also loves graphic design, making music videos, playing music, drawing, and karaoke.