Casandra Schwartz and Taylor Wan

  If you stopped by the Healy Family Student Center this past weekend you might have been in for a surprise. Instead of a bunch of fellow classmates lounging around and studying, you saw 305 hackers working hard at their computers. Hoya Hacks took over. To learn more about what Hoya Hacks is, we reached out to Casandra Schwartz, who cofounded this event with Taylor Wan.

1. First of all, what is Hoya Hacks?

Hoya Hacks is Georgetown’s premier hackathon. We are bringing 300 students to Georgetown for 36 hours to build and innovate in both software and hardware, as part of a larger technological revolution at Georgetown.

2. What is a hackathon?

Hackathons span several days and bring together some of the best designers, developers, and innovators to form teams around a problem or idea. These teams collaboratively code to create unique solutions from scratch, which generally take the shape of websites, mobile apps, and robots.

3. Why did you decide to found Hoya Hacks?

We decided to found Hoya Hacks because we want to raise Georgetown’s profile in the tech world. As seniors, we just went through the recruiting process and a lot of tech companies don’t even recruit at Georgetown. People are surprised when we say we studied computer science at Georgetown. So we created this event to change that. We wanted highlight the amazing tech talent at Georgetown and make it easier for future students when looking for jobs in the tech industry.

4. How can people get involved?

While it is too late to get involved this year, we will need help next year. We want more Georgetown students to participate and to learn about coding. No previous experience is necessary!

5. What has been the biggest thing you learned during the planning process?

This biggest thing we learned during this planning process has been how many people and organizations have been involved in the planning process. It’s easy to say that we wanted to start a hackathon, but it takes a lot of work to actually execute. We are lucky to work with amazing people, some who work at Georgetown, and some who are our classmates. We definitely could not have done this without them.

6. What are you most excited about?

We are most excited about showcasing Georgetown talent to other people and letting our peers compete at the same level as student from universities that are more known for tech.