Architecture Hackathon

I have been in and out of different majors during my career at Texas A&M; my first hackathon convinced me Computer Engineering was the place for me. I had no idea what a hackathon was, and I was extremely insecure about my ability to succeed at one. As I walked into the room where all the other hackers were gathered, I began to ease up. I saw some friendly faces, and everyone seemed extremely relaxed and sociable. After the Dean of Architecture gave a short welcome, everyone dispersed to find their optimal coding environment.

From left to right: Karrie Cheng, Christopher Nolan, Raunak Srivastava, Raphael Sarmiento

My team and I are featured in the picture above.  I came with a team of 4, but we met another Aggie named Feng who we welcomed into our group. Unfortunately Feng had to leave us to go to his Professor's seminar in Austin. Karrie, Raunak, and Raphael are all in Computer Science classes with me and that's where we met. When we decided to team up for this hackathon, we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. None of us knew each other that well before this hackathon, but somehow 24 hours of sleep deprived coding gave us a unique bond. I will never forget watching Frozen in the middle of the night while writing code with my fellow Aggies. 

Raphael Sarmiento hacking with a projector for enhanced visual display. 

I met so many awesome Aggies at this event. There were students from many different majors and tons of mentors as well. Everyone was in good spirits and willing to take a break from hacking for a good conversation. The college of Architecture was extremely generous with their sponsorship. Admission was free and we had a constant supply of sandwiches and cookies from Blue Baker, Papa Johns, Starbucks, Red bull, fruit, and lots of other snacks. I had never been in the College of Architecture before, the building was artistic and homey. Having this hackathon on Texas A&M's campus was great and I can't wait for the fall when there will be another hackathon hosted on campus. When Texas A&M engineers and computer scientists gather in one building, who knows what could happen? 

The idea behind this hackathon was to represent diversity in a unique way using visualization tools. My group and I weren't really sure what we were going to do but after 7 hours of brainstorming, we came up with some ideas. Eventually we decided to create a globe representing diversity around the world in ranked order. However we based the diversity of each country on how many citizens of that country could speak two languages. This globe started at Papua New Guinea (almost every citizen could speak two languages), and continued through out 100 other countries. We immediately found a trend. Most of the top 50 countries were in Africa, leading us to believe that diversity could possibly be based on other factors than race and gender! 

Here is an image of our Hack! Displayed is the 3rd "most diverse" country. 

This is our Hack after 10 rotations. Madagascar ranked number 10 

For the development of these web applications we used the D3 libraries and ran them off of a local server. We used a Prezi for our demonstration to the judges. When we presented, we were rushed because so many groups had a great end product ready to be demonstrated. We saw tons of great ideas and the judges seemed to love everyone's hack. After our presentation we relaxed and talked with other groups. Eventually we were brought back into the room and the prizes were announced. We won "Most Diverse Team" and "Overall Winner." This being my first hackathon, I was filled with surprise and excitement at our victory. Now we were leaving not only with a free t-shirt and new friends but also with $600 in Amazon gift cards and lunch with the Dean at the top of Rudder tower! 

Regardless if my team had won the grand prize or not, I would've had a great time at my first hackathon. To me, this hackathon was a great way to meet new people, learn new things, and just have a fun time. I would recommend it to anyone, including those who are insecure about their developing ability like me. I do have one warning though--after you go to your first hackathon you will be hooked. There's no coming back and soon you will find yourself flying around the country to attend these amazing events.