“Hack@Smith: Closing the Gender G(app) is Smith College’s premier hackathon. Sponsored by Smith’s Computer Science club, “Smithies in CS”, students from all over the east coast are invited to Smith’s campus for a 24-hour hackathon.”
Last weekend, the team behind Hack@Smith hosted a hackathon with a goal of having more than 50% of their attendees being female. The foundations of Smithies in Computer Science were built upon encouraging more women to pursue Computer Science, diversifying the tech industry, and to strengthen the college’s CS community.
88% of our hackers were female-identifying! Even better, 100% rocked our mission of hacking to help close the gender gap in tech. So proud!
— Hack@Smith (@hackatsmith) March 30, 2015
We had the utmost pleasure of supporting this initiative via our very own US Commissioner, Nick who spent the weekend in Northampton and have since shared with us his favorite moments from Hack@Smith!
When the Smith College President came to visit…
Julia, the organizer of @hackatsmith, leading her college president, @presmccartney through @codeorg. #SmithiesInCS pic.twitter.com/8dQM146VCB — Major League Packing (@MLHacks) March 29, 2015
Favorite Hack
Evicted – A team of two first time hackers created a game to reinforce their Java skills. Evicted is a text based adventure, starts as you find yourself in a dark room in an abandoned apartment complex. It’s your job to determine why you’re there and what happened. Your first two options:
A) Cry.
B) Turn on the light.
Excessive Tweeting…
Thanks to Hack@Smith’s Most Prolific on Social Media prize, an attendee actually managed to get cut off from Twitter for tweeting too much as she was flagged up as a potential bot. #welldone
. @hackatsmith is giving away a prize for the most prolific social media poster. Do we count? pic.twitter.com/3sXa03Jqsq
— Major League Packing (@MLHacks) March 28, 2015
This first time hacker that went on to win the hackathon…
According to Nick: A high schooler found out about hackathons and knew he wanted to go to one. So, he checked our site and found the one coming up soonest. He drove two hours from Boston, found a team at the event, all of them first time hackers, some of them first time coders. Together they created The Flying Car Museum, an Oculus Rift hack that would take you to remote destinations which you could explore in 3D and learn fun facts!
Once a Smithie, always a Smithie…
A massive Hackathon Heroes shoutout to the Smith College Alumni, who came from as far away as the Bay Area to act as hackathon mentors. This gallant show of dedication allowed for teams to have at least one mentor each!
We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves at Hack@Smith, which was a fantastic hackathon that enabled and supported women in Computer Science. Special thank you to the organizing team, sponsors, and everyone involved for making it happen!
Official Hack@Smith photos are all up on our Facebook page, found HERE.
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