Posted by Braydon~
If you know what this means, you should have been there.
A few weeks ago, Jon came by to see the kids and hang out for a few minutes. While he loves the kids and is just a great all around guy, he also happens to be working toward his masters in computer science and is super smart.
For the last few months I’ve been toying with an idea for a piece of software that I’d like to see turned into a business but wasn’t sure how to move it forward in a reasonable way.
As he was sitting there, it dawned on me – we could run a hackathon here at Lehigh! I looked at Jon and suggested the idea – he immediately loved it.
Jon mentors some of the students. Or maybe he’s just cheating?
But wait. If you don’t know what a hackathon is, this might be a bit weird. Check here for a primer, but in a nutshell it’s one or two day event in which a bunch of software programmers get together and try to develop something cool.
Then there is the “oh man, come on and work!” everyone has had before.
There are a lot of reasons to run a hackathon, and in this case, pretty much all the criteria you could want were hit: student growth and experience opportunity, tie-in to residential fellows program, community building with a local business, opportunity for student internships, and overall innovation programming at the university. What’s not to love?
There’s lots to love about a Lehigh hackathon – maybe mostly hacking with good friends.
It took us a few weeks, but we pulled it off. Or more accurately, Jon pulled it off. This guy has incredible leadership skills. Pulling people together at one of the toughest times in the semester is no mean feat. And bringing in Professor Femister for additional guidance was the icing on the cake. Watch out, Jon is going to go far.
None of this would have happened – ever – if we were not living on campus. Who knew that magic like this would be possible.
Thus, for about 10 hours this past Saturday we had a dozen or so CS students hacking away at a cool concept for an interesting piece of software. While there were bumps, a bit of anxiety, a surprising large amount of pizza consumed, and some prizes given out, the big win was seeing these amazing students come up with creative, innovative ideas and work together on teams.
I would be remiss without a shout out to Heather and the kids for hanging in there for the hackathon. Heather managed to do both boy’s hair (OMG how did that happen – that is a TRUE hackathon) and braid about 10 micro braids into Meera’s hair.
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So many times during the day I stood there seeing the future and feeling a wave of excitement for what is to come. Be sure to check out the article by an up and coming journalism major in the Brown and White!
Lehigh Hackathon 2015!
We are already looking forward to the 2nd annual Lehigh Hackathon. We’re taking what we learned here and making next year even better!
Sounds like a neat experience! So are you going to share what this cool new piece of software is going to do?
Maybe!
We’re evaluating what the next steps should be before anything else.
Even for an imbecile like me this is fantastic! Can’t wait to see how it develops. And to see Meera’s and the boys’ hair.
My husband will move us to PA to go back to school so he can do Hackathons if he finds about them. Sounds like his idea of heaven. He’s, not shockingly, a software developer.
So awesome!!! I loved reading this — the actual details went over my head but the significance and the learning journey is not lost on me. I had heard of hackathons, the NGO I work with has been a recipient of a hackathon and I’ve seen posts about Girls who Code (also really cool and necessary imo) but I only vaguely knew what a Hackathon was and had no idea they took so long — and I can imagine the anxiety moments/hair pulling out situations (I personally am in awe of programmers!). It’s so fantastic to hear how Braydon is managing to plug in your professional skills into the student community (I so love hearing Heather sharing details about her exta-curricular work), and I can see this is a definite Win-Win situation for Braydon and the students and really great leadership opportunity for Jon, and like you said “what’s not to love?” hitting all the criteria for personal and professional development (for all partiies involved) and partnership opportunities too — the french say it best, I wish you all “BON COURAGE” with this project and upcoming working together
– Kate
P.S. on an unrelated issue, technical blog front – I do like the clean-look but I do miss being able to search by month for your posts, and it’s not very mobile user friendly so it’s a bit annoying not being able to swipe left and right through the posts when reading it…sorry I know this is unsolicited feedback and I so appreciate both your time and efforts in blogging,
Hi Kate
Thanks for the feedback on the blog. I’ve been meaning to look for a new theme so this just gives me more insight into what’s important!
Thanks Braydon!
– Kate