Tri-Co Hackathon

I had a lot of fun joining the Tri-Co Hackathon this afternoon as a Swarthmore remote alumni judge. There were eight student teams, and all of them had whipped up some really clever and interesting app or service ideas in only 24 hours. Unfortunately we could only pick our top four teams, which involved some difficult deliberation among us judges.

Of course I review and give feedback on project proposals and prototypes all the time at work, but this is the first time I’ve had just a few minutes of presentation and questions to jot down some notes and make a joint decision in a hackathon format. The rubric had us consider factors like concept, design, creativity, utility, and complexity. I think I balanced them well?

I wish we had had a program like this when I was on campus! It was really cool to see all the ideas and energy turned around so quickly. I guess the closest I’ve come is some CTF events through work.

If asked I would definitely do something like this again. It fits with the career advice calls I do with current students and recent graduates via Swarthmore’s alumni platform. I really like hearing from young potential computer scientists and software engineers, and I hope I can give useful advice from a 20+ year career. I just have to not think too hard about current freshmen only being 6 or 7 years old than my kid. 👴🏻

#programming #swarthmore