At the fifth iteration of WHACK, the Wellesley College hackathon, over 300 students from colleges throughout the U.S. Northeast will come together for 36 hours to turn their ideas into reality.
The flight in from New Orleans was a little hectic, but manageable. (Thanks Delta for the free movies!) Wellesley is about an hour out from Boston Logan airport, so I caught a Lyft to the Alumnae Hall, where most of the weekends activities were scheduled to occur.
It was dark when I arrived, I quickly got in line to register which was all digital. I then picked out an event shirt and made my way downstairs to the Hacking Space.
Sponsors (Viacom, Quora, Constant Contact, Planatir, and more) were along the walls. Employees from each sponsor was onsite to answer questions regarding their technology and any current engineering or product internship, fellowship, and/or full time roles the company had.
The center held four long tables for hacking with power strips interspersed throughout. MLH’s table was off to the side and offered both mentoring for the event, hardware available for checkout, and free Soylent meal replacement drinks and Awake (caffeinated) chocolate.
After dropping my stuff off, I grabbed some sandwiches to snack on before we were all called into the auditorium for Opening Ceremonies.
The basic format for the event was explained by Katy Ma and Jesslyn Tannady, the event Co-Organizers, who also introduced the event’s keynote speakers, Dr. Robbin Chapman, the Associate Provost and Academic Director of Diversity & Inclusion at Wellesley College, and Joy Buolamwini, Founder of Code4Rights and the Algorithmic Justice League.
Dr. Chapman gave an amazing speech about diversity and inclusion and being a woman in STEAM.
Joy discussed her work at the MIT Lab helping to resolve issues with “the coded gaze” in facial recognition technology.
The talks were followed by some rules and announcements from MLH regarding items like: details on resources from Sponsors, rules and regulations, and a few FAQs.
Katy and Jesslyn came out again to announce the prizes available for the event, final submission deadlines, and how to contact mentors, security, etc if needed.
From the auditorium, I went across a small Quad to Lulu, the Campus Center, where a fireside chat with Esther Jang, Lead Product Marketer at Venmo and Wellesley Alum. She discussed startup life at the company, it’s acquisition by Paypal, and what the company is looking towards in the future.
When I came back to the Alumnae Hall, Dropbox surprised everyone with a late night snack, BOBA TEA!!!
It was now nearing midnight, and after having a chat with a few folks, I went upstairs to call it a night in the auditorium, camping out with my pillow and sleeping bag.
I woke up Saturday morning, packed up my sleeping bag, and headed downstairs to get ready for the day.
Breakfast was already out by the time I made it, breakfast pastries and fresh fruit.
Today I ran off to a few different talks and workshops, including “Intro to Arduino,” hosted by Wellesley’s Engineering group.
I had prior experience with Raspberry Pi’s, but had never really played with Arduinos, so it was awesome getting introduced to the Web Editor and all the documentation and labs that are available via Arduino’s website.
I then stayed to catch an awesome workshop on “Writing for Quora,” hosted by Danielle Kain of the Quora team. She talked about how anyone can contribute their experiences and personal knowledge to the platform and benefit others.
Next was another fireside chat, this one was from Mikayla Hutchinson, Principal Program Manager at Microsoft. She talked about doing work in FOSS, working for Microsoft, GDC/TrainJam, and being trans in the industry.
I skipped back over to the Alumnae Hall where I was greeted by LUNCH! And not just any lunch, but KOREAN FOOD!
And, yes, that is kimchi fried rice in the background…
After a rather large lunch, I managed to make it back to Lulu to Lisa Van Gelder’s talk about “A/B Testing Sexism: Interviewing as a female executive in tech.” It was an amazing presentation where she highlighted how difficult it is for women to make it into, and advance, in the executive level due to hiring bias that looks for “experience only” in women, and “potential” in men.
I also caught a last minute fireside chat with four current Youtubers who were all Wellesley Alumnae. They discussed their internship experience with Google and several other companies, their degree background, and offered helpful suggestions for those currently applying.
I also checked out Planatir’s presentation before heading over to another Quora panel where the two presenters discussed their internship experience that lead to their current roles in Quora along with their academic background, majors, etc. (Also teaching that career is not a straight line.)
Cupcakes had shown up earlier as a snack, so I grabbed a few of those. Fortunately, the organizers took pity on all of us who were enjoying food that might not be so healthy and came up with a way for us to work some calories off.
Bubble soccar…no, I’m not kidding.
For those that needed a break from non-stop coding, you could join teams, jump into a giant inflatable ball, and roll around outside at your leisure.
Many hackers continued well into the night to meet Sunday’s 10am deadline. I, however, decided to get some rest.
Sunday came, and breakfast was served. Submitting teams were asked to push their project’s final materials through Devpost before being divided up into groups for “Demos.” Two different groups of demos exhibited in the hackathon space while judges determined who would receive which prizes. (There was a lot of prizes.)
During this time Lunch was served. Winners were announced during closing ceremonies. By 2pm, people had cleared out and made their way back to their homes via event sponsored buses.
I also snuck away during all this to make it to the airport for my flight back home. WHACK was an awesome event, and I hope to make it there again next year.
