Augustana College’s Google Developer Group will host its first-ever 24-hour hackathon, known as HackAugie, on April 18 and 19. Teams of two-to-four students will work together to create a solution for a real-life business problem.
Sophomore Imane Mansouri is the vice lead of HackAugie.
“I personally haven’t been to a hackathon before but I’ve participated in national and international competitions before,” Mansouri said. “So I know how important it is for students to come together with other students and work on real world projects.”
Students don’t need to be computer science majors or have any coding experience to apply and participate. The event will have workshops at the start to help beginners learn the basics and get started, but coding is not strictly required.
Students from nearby colleges and universities are also welcome to attend and participate. The event is free to register for and includes food, workshops, prizes and more.
“There’s going to be a lot of different components to it, we’re going to have a career fair … and different workshops,” Mansouri said.
The organizers hope 100 students will attend their inaugural event and aim for it to grow into an annual event.
Junior My Ha, the sponsor chair for HackAugie, shared the organizers’ hopes and expectations for the event.
“I think this is our first year, so it’s going to be small … not all the students know what a hackathon is …, but as long as we introduce it to [the students] it’ll get bigger,” Ha said.
The group hopes to partner with community sponsors to provide students with a range of opportunities to learn and network with businesses and other students from different schools. Event organizers shared that participants in other hackathons have gotten internships and other opportunities. They hope to provide Augustana students with similar opportunities.
“It’s something you can talk about in interviews, something you can put on your resume, share on your LinkedIn, and not just that but come together with students from different areas … to solve problems,” Mansouri said.
One element of hackathons that makes them particularly attractive for career development is that the prompts are provided by companies, ensuring they address real-world problems and making them more relevant.
“I think the neatest thing about the hackathon is the company will give the prompt … if you just do some random project on the internet, the company won’t see the relation between the project on your resume and their business,” Ha said.
Organizers said they want to make this hackathon an opportunity for students who may get accepted to other hackathons across the country but don’t have the means to attend them.
“One of the main reasons we wanted to organize the event is Augustana students get accepted to different hackathons and different competitions around the country, but they maybe can’t afford to travel there, so we figured, why not bring the experience to Augustana?” Mansouri said.
Students can register by filling out a form on the event’s website.
