Preface

This was the first annual HackRPI and I had the pleasure of helping to organize the incredible event. Almost an entire year of planning went into it–and I cannot claim very much of it. Most of the organizing was done by the founding four: Sebastion, Rob, Jake, and Jazmine. The event was their idea, as was the creation of the Rensselaer Hackathon Organization. I did help with some minor tasks and was brought into the inner circle late in the planning process to train me for a bigger leadership role for HackRPI 2015. My biggest contribution this year was that I took it upon myself to create a status board for the event. It started with idea to give an award to the best commit message and evolved into so much more. Since I saw no one else had the time or inclination to take on the project, I worked on it by myself. It became quite impressive and a project of which I am quite proud. For more information on the project, check out my HackRPI Status Board blog.

The Event

Since I built the status board, I was in charge of it over the course of the event. Therefore, my concentration rested with the mentoring system I had put together. After we finished setting up for the event, I had to run around to all of our sponsors, pitch my mentoring system to them, and get them into the system. Obviously I was terrified at first because public speaking was not my strongest attribute but after I got going it went very well. Everyone I pitched to was really excited and thought what I had built was quite impressive. What was even better was that the system seemed to be working.

Along with managing the status board and posting announcements, I was constantly running around making sure the event was running smoothly and that our volunteers knew what needed to done. I was also always gathering feedback about the status board and how mentoring system was working.

When I was not running around, I was in the volunteer room managing the status board. I had a great time talking with two RPI alumni, Brian and Ben from Kitware. Their company did not sponsor enough to get their own table at the event so they mostly hung around the volunteer room. I talked to them about the status board and its known issues. I was much too exhausted and too busy to sit down and concentrate on a coding problem, so I was happy to let someone else take a look at the project. Two other idle RPI students helped out too: Samson and Aaron. Brian and Ben helped me better understand MongoDB (as this was my first time using it) among other things, for which I am very grateful.

I have been told I dozed off mid-conversation around 5:30am on Sunday for about 30 minutes. I was so exhausted, but there was always work to be done. The status board was slowing down because of too many commit messages (I think) which sadly also brought down the mentoring system. I had a great conversation which a representative from CommerceHub around 7:30am. He wanted to be a mentor but when I explained that the system was broken, he insisted on trying to help with the problem. I was almost completely out of it because I was so tired, but we talked for a while even after he realized he could not help. After that, I finally laid down for a short two hour nap.

When I woke up, it was time to run around to tell everyone to put their projects on ChallengePost and set up the Great Hall for the expos. I felt the expos went very well and I was really happy to see some fantastic projects being showcased, excited students explaining their projects, and engaged onlookers. Several professors stopped by and were quite impressed.

After a small judging mishap (the judges erased a chalkboard with their decisions before writing them down, leading to a frantic what-did-we-just-agree-upon discussion), the closing ceremonies were finally underway. For some reason someone handed me the microphone and I stalled for about 10 minutes while the judging was taking place. Apparently, my fear of public speaking was non-existant on such little sleep, and I actually enjoyed talking to the audience of about 500 people (first time for everything I guess). I also got to help hand out the MLH medals to the winners which was a pretty cool experience.

After cleaning up for much longer than any of us wanted to, the very first HackRPI was finally over. It was awesome. I was glad for it to be over, but even more glad to have been a part of it. As a team, we have a long list of things we learned from this experience and of things to improve upon for next year. HackRPI 2015 starts now (after sleeping for a few weeks and finals).