〽 MHacks
MHacks is the University of Michigan’s official collegiate hackathon. I was on the organizing team from MHacks IV (Sept 2014) through MHacks X (Sept 2017) and I led the tech team for MHacks 8, where over 2200 students from all over the country hacked at the Detroit Masonic Temple.
The tech team at MHacks was responsible for designing and developing all of the tools and infrastructure required to plan run the hackathon. The MHacks website/server handled hacker signups, applications, and in person attendee registration. It also served data for our Android and iOS apps which served as companions throughout the 36 hours event. The apps provided a ton of useful features like maps, detailed tech talk & workshop schedules, push notifications, among other things. In the later versions, we included more organizer tools, like the ability for event organizers to instantly scan event tickets/admissions to register hackers as they arrived. Our goal was to build an epic, high-tech experience for students from all over the world.
Working on the organizing team for MHacks taught me a lot about building, scaling, and deploying (sometimes hacked together) projects to work for thousands of people. I learned countless lessons through doing and will forever be grateful that freshman me stumbled into that MHacks IV volunteer meeting. It also taught me a lot about building communities, working with people of varying goals, and to never underestimate what a few college kids with no sleep can do.
