Last weekend, I participated in TartanHacks 2017 and all in all, it was a great experience. For one, it was the first hackathon I’ve been to in a year, and it was also the first time I was ever on an all girls team! There were a lot of people at the opening ceremony and the sponsors they had lined up were pretty amazing (as were the prizes!!).
As with a lot of hackathons there was a LOT of free swag, like shirts and goodies. Needless to say, at the beginning of the hackathon, there was a huge line to visit all of the sponsor booths. The hackathon was organized well; the food was always on time and there were a lot of mentors and sponsors to help students with their projects.
It was super stressful for me and my team, as we all seemed to be using very new knowledge to put together a working app. By the end, we were able to put some parts together and come up with a presentation for people walking by. We also got to check out some great projects that other teams came up with!
The closing ceremony consisted of a few teams presenting their projects followed by sponsors presenting their prizes. The projects varied from websites to help CMU students choose classes to Chrome extensions that suggest charities to donate to based on your browsing history, to a project that can view an art piece and immediately provide information about it.
Overall, it was a great experience and I can’t wait to participate next year!