Event Spotlight: YHack
The second student-led hackathon of the (hopefully once in a lifetime) Fall 2020 semester was an integrated event, YHack! YHack is Yale’s annual hackathon, now in its seventh year. For YHack 2020, the virtual event took place over the course of a week, November 7–14, instead of a weekend, allowing teams more time to work on their projects. Over 700 hackers joined in, working across time zones and disciplines to learn from each other, build cool stuff, and make friends.
Jau Tung Chan, one of the lead organizers, shared some of his takeaways from this year’s experience.
For me, YHack was really interesting to organize this year, to say the least. As with most annual in-person events around the world, this was our first time holding it in the virtual format, and to be completely honest, a couple of months ago, we weren’t completely sure how we were going to pull it off (or whether we were even going to organize YHack this year at all)! After all, hackathons are quite significantly about the physical atmosphere of collaboration and the hustle to get a project done over a weekend. That being said, however, I think we leveraged the virtual format as much as we could — holding panels and fireside chats with various industry professionals who would probably not be able to find the time to travel down to Yale otherwise and extending the hackathon to a week long to allow more flexibility for participants to work on their projects. Based on this, what I liked most about YHack this year, unsurprisingly, was the flexibility that it offered to everyone all around — to participants; to us as organizers; to sponsors; and to judges. A lot of things were made asynchronous and flexible, and I think this allowed everyone to juggle their daily/weekly commitments alongside YHack a lot more healthily compared to a traditional weekend in-person hackathon, where it was essentially just crunch-time for 24/36 hours.
Earth Hacks hosted a track, Environmental Impact to Action, focusing on climate change denial, and a workshop focusing on the role of environment and ethics in tech:
We will guide students through use cases with real-world existing and upcoming technologies and ask them to come up with the most dystopian real-world scenario that could occur if these technologies are implemented at scale. We will then ask students to propose ethics and environmental checkpoints for these technologies and discuss with each other what common pitfalls and remedies they discover. This exercise is meant to have computer science students think about the social and environmental ramifications of technology we build.
The winning project of Earth Hacks’ track was One Earth, by team Fem, consisting of Ananya Rajagopalan, Ceyda Varlibas, Tanya Gupta, and Srinidhi Kundur. This project was a game aimed at those who are unconvinced by or reject the science of climate change, focusing on having the user ask questions and make decisions to understand climate change impacts rather than sharing additional research and data. Ananya shared that “Me and my team really liked the Earth Hacks track at YHack, specifically because (aside from COVID) it was concerning the other most pressing issue right now. This was my first hackathon, and I was really happy to be working on the Earth Hacks track since I felt like I was doing meaningful work the whole week. “
Tanya said “It was a great experience learning working in a team from 4 different time zones, all with a strong passion for sustainability. Got introduced to web development, and winning a prize in the first hackathon I’ve ever participated in was simply a cherry-on-the-top!” Srinidhi said “This was my first hackathon and I had a great experience working with my team. It was exciting to work on an all-female team and to work on a project dealing with the challenges of climate change. I look forward to continuing to work on projects in this space and to continue developing my business, analytical, and coding skills in future hackathons.”
Check out all the cool projects from the Earth Hacks track and more on YHack’s Devpost!