There’s a Hackathon set for this weekend at Virginia Tech. Students from around the country will be in Blacksburg. ---But no need to worry. These are not the same hackers who stage attacks on computers.
"We need to throw out the misnomer. Hackathons are not really about getting together and hacking in to mainframes," says Computer Science major Brandon Potts, Transportation Coordinator for this weekend’s Hackathon at Virginia Tech.
"People think that. It’s actually just a bunch of builders and programmers getting together and spending a certain amount of time building some sort of project or achieving some sort of goal at the end of it."
That could be a website, some new software, an app or a robot that’s sort of ‘hacked’ together by teams working round the clock to create it.
"The Hackathon word comes from a combination of hack and marathon," explains Ben Johnston, the lead organizer and founder of VT Hacks. "So it’s a marathon coding session basically. And there are talks that happens at these things, which kind of makes it conference like and there is a lot of networking that goes on, but the networking that happens and the connections that you make there, are very different from what you would make at a conference. A conference is more like, you know, I’m so and so from x company and here it’s like; I’m having a bug can you fix that? And oh, by the way ,what’s your name?"
If the old model for working with companies before you’re hired full time, was internships, this may be a new model where students demonstrate what they can do in a real world atmosphere, under pressure, with limited resources and time constraints.
Computer engineering major, Eric Hahn describes Hackathons as part of a new culture of learning. "The stereotype for engineers is they study all the time and work by themselves or in very small groups but now, it’s, they study all the time they work all the time but they work in large groups and have a lot of fun while they’re doing it."
These guys – and Hackathoners are mostly guys at this point, started by going to the gatherings at other universities until Ben Johnston founded VT Hackers 2 years ago. It started with just a few people and quickly grew to a few hundred. He says more women are getting involved and the whole thing is evolving.
"You’re hearing a lot about the oncoming sharing economy; air bnb, Uber, Eat With, I think is another one. You can borrow someone’s car you can eat at someone’s table in their kitchen and that’s just how it is now becoming. And with this ‘share economy’ it kind of expands again into hackathons, where they’re paying for us to come them, which is just bizarre," says Johnston.
That’s right, the costs for travel and putting on the event, come from the sponsors, which in this case include Microsoft, Bloomberg, Ford Motors, and Tech Pad. For around $45,000, they get a force of mostly young coders to work to out solutions to their problems. And because there’s no fee to attend, organizers say they can’t be sure exactly how many will show. Among the prizes that will be awarded is one called, "Code for Good” where hackers invent something to be given away free to charity. It’s part of the force for good, they say hackathons represent.
