Hackathons

I fell in love with hackathons in grade 12, and I still remember gathering up a team of 4 friends I met that semester and traveling to McMaster for DeltaHacks 9. The feeling of building out of your imagination for the first time and getting to know your team throughout the 48 hours was an experience I could never forget.

We definitely were clueless on where to start, having no experience with HTML, CSS, and using APIs, and 2023 GPT definitely led us down the wrong paths at times. We were scratching our heads reading through the Spotify API, going on snack runs to clear our heads, and made pivots like switching from React to HTML in the middle of the hackathon.

Towards the end, we managed to scrape together a website called Dyeify that was basically non-functional.

But we weren't disappointed. Looking back, we were so proud of what we did; we made a promise from then on to continue running hackathons to grow together. And the following hackathon after, we ran our second hackathon together, cooped up in my friend's basement during a winter storm, where we won the Best Game category at YRHacks!

The hackathon experience wasn't just building and grinding. It's sleeping on the couches with the lights still on, going on midnight runs to grab food, waiting until it hits 5 AM so you can go to Starbucks because the building's wifi cuts out, turning off your friend's alarm for him that's still in his jeans because he sleeps through it, and yapping about life while you/AI is coding. I really think I had the best team I could ever get back then and I'm so grateful to be part of this community.

Eventually, in my first year of university, I'd attended my fair share of hackathons and decided to apply to be an organizer. I thought it was about time to give back to the community and joined Hack the Valley, UofT Scarborough's hackathon, as a developer.

It was a great learning experience where I got to build a web app to register hackers and track their meals. It was pretty fulfilling to see it used at the event and how much it sped up the process compared to when I was a hacker. In my second year with HTV, for its 10th anniversary, we remade the website completely from scratch. The team really grew on me and I'm excited to share that this will be my third year with them and I'm excited for what's to come!

Organizers usually have social events to get closer with the team, whether that's going to Activate, a board game cafe, an escape room, or a picnic. But in the summer of 2025, we were invited to a very special event: HackCon at Camp Pontiac, located in Copake, New York. Ten of us from the organizing team went, and it was so much fun!

Running Smash Bros on the bus there

At HackCon, we got to meet Swift, the CEO of Major League Hacking (MLH), organizers from all around the world (Hong Kong, Europe, the USA) and listened to the many conference talks there. In addition, the camp had so many amenities like volleyball, basketball, ice cream, and s'mores at night.

After HackCon, we commuted back to New York City to stay for a couple of days, running karaoke at the back of the bus. We hit up Din Tai Fung, which looked like an underground nightclub, ate some NY pizza, hit up Times Square, and visited the Gentle Monster store in SoHo. I'm sure this is a memory I will never forget and I'm so happy that I joined Hack the Valley!