12 thoughts on “Builtworlds Hackathon”

  1. I attended the BuiltWorlds Hackathon at Roosevelt University from October 4th -6th. Having never before been to a hackathon, I was not completely sure what to expect. I was excited but also a little nervous. I thought that all we were gonna do was get there, learn about coding, code, and then leave. I also read online that hackathons were usually overnight events but BuiltWorlds was organized so that everyone went home during the night.

    This activity has helped me to understand more about the applications of computer science in real life. In my computer science classes so far, all my labs have strictly been related to coding and there were never any real-life applications. At the hackathon, three companies presented a challenge, and our team had to code something that would complete the challenge.

    At this hackathon, I learned about teamwork, working on little sleep, and of course, coding. Working in teams was extremely beneficial because we were able to accomplish so much more when we split up the work between us. Throughout the hackathon, many of us were running on little to no sleep because.

    I most definitely would like to attend another hackathon again. Hackathons taught me so much in such a short period of time and although they are very tiring and exhaustive, I think that they are a great experience.

  2. I was one of the 12 IIT students who attended this hackathon. I was nervous because this was my first hackathon and the guys I went with, knew a lot more in terms of application of concepts than I did.

    In my computer science classes so far, all my labs have strictly been related to coding and there were never any real-life applications. At the hackathon, three companies presented a challenge, and our team had to code something that would complete the challenge.

    This hackathon taught me how to learn something quick and make something out of it. I learnt how to use android studio in a short and tried to make an app which labels the pictures we take from it with it’s geographical metadata. Without missing sleep like my fellow teammates did, I tried to code and contribute to the project. Apart from the coding experiences , I learnt the improvement of communication while working in a team. Designating tasks ahead of time and diligently working towards that enabled us to complete the project and present it in front of the jury.

    I would like to attend hackathons and I would encourage other students and professionals to attend hackathons too. An individual is get to learn a lot from the hackathon not just about coding but also other important things around programming and software designing.

  3. The BuiltWorks Hackathon was the first hackathon I had ever gone to, and honestly, at the beginning I was nervous and worried that I wouldn’t know what to do because it seemed like everyone already had an idea of what they were there to do. However, after the mingle session I met some nice people who were willing to get me on board on work with me to complete the challenge.
    I learned a lot of new things during the hackathon, like how to work well on a single project with other coders and link everyone’s work together to make it run as a single system, but one of the main things I did that I had not done or imagined my self doing yet was getting involved with machine learning and artificial intelligence. Throughout the weekend, I go involved with deep learning using python to try to detect objects in videos or images.
    This last weekend made me understand more about how ML works and what goes into making it work smart and accurately.
    I would definitely like to attend other activities just like this because I believe there’s a lot of stuff I’m yet to learn about CS and this is a fun and hands-on way to learn them.

  4. BuiltWorlds was the first hackathon that I had ever been to and because of this the first couple hours felt a little overwhelming. This feeling subsided as I began to come up with solutions to Clayco’s problem that was presented. An issue that came up during this process was that the solutions my team and I were brainstorming were more complex than the software development skills we knew. We decided to present our more complex solution anyway but built out a minimum viable product demo which was incorporated into the presentation. This method seems to be one of the best ways to present at a hackathon and I know we will flush this presentation concept out even more in the future.

    BuiltWorlds was really a learning experience for me in regards to fixing certain industry problems, how to present an idea or concept and building software solutions in general. I was fortunate enough to have a member of my team that knew a lot more than me and because of this I learned a lot about APIs, databases and how to send and receive data.

    I will definitely be going to another hackathon as thinking up a complex software solution was honestly a fun way of spending my weekend. At some point I know that I will want to build software of my own. I believe hackathons are a great place to not only hone those software skills but also meet people who have the same drive to build.

  5. The BuiltWorlds Hackathon was the first Hackathon I had ever attended. Prior to attending, I was honestly indifferent. During the first few hours of the Hackathon, it seemed to me that everyone had their teams sorted out but luckily, at the nick of time, I found four other amazing team members.

    My work in the team was to deal with the presentations as I wasn’t well grounded in machine learning and artificial intelligence as most of my team members but I observed their works as they did it so as to learn more and understand more about our presentation.

    Attending this Hackathon helped me learn more about how selling a business, joining ideas together and trying to sell them. I also learnt more about what my course entails and I learnt more about innovation.

    At the beginning of the Builtworlds Hackathon, I honestly did not plan on attending another Hackathon but currently, after the Hackathon, I wish to attend more to learn more about my course and to get more involved with machine learning. I also wish to attend more to put my skills at work, acquire more and to have the advantage of working with people who happen to be more learned about the course and other related courses.

  6. The BuiltWorlds Hackathon at Roosevelt University was my very first hackathon. I knew that there were going to be other Illinois Tech students with me as well, but I didn’t know any of them, so I was alone for the initial presentation of the hackathon. Looking around, I was very overwhelmed. There were lots of professional software engineers and people who have coded for many years, but I am only a freshman. I had believed that this hackathon was going to be more student friendly and have an easier set of problems, but I was mistaken. There were three problems that were given, by three different companies, and all of them seemed difficult to even understand. Furthermore, a lot of them required machine learning, which I did not know.
    After the presentation, I met with the other Illinois Tech students and got to know them. We each had different skills in Computer Science. Some of us were good at python, or Java. Some were good at website design and JavaScript, and some helped plan. This made me learn that there is a lot more to computer science than I originally thought, and a lot of it isn’t taught to freshman, so I must learn most of this on my own time. During the building process, I got to learn a little bit of JavaScript and tried to build a mobile app with Android Studio, which was much harder than I thought.
    Overall, I would like to go to another hackathon. However, next time, I would like to go to a more student friendly one, so that the challenges that they present to us would be realistic to solve in the given time frame.

  7. Going into the hackathon, I felt nervous like everyone else. I knew about hackathons since before high school, but I always felt intimidated to go. All CS students I knew seemed like coding wizards, knowing any language, with no problems learning a new one overnight, no matter the complexity. I figured that without this skill, I shouldn’t even compete. Recently, I discovered that nobody knows what they’re doing at their first hackathon. This “wizardry” I saw is the product of years of jumping into a situation and figuring things out. All one has is problem solving skills and wits. With that attitude, I went to BuiltWorlds 2019. Now, more than I was scared I was determined to stop being scared.
    During the actual hackathon, I learned something new every day. For example, on Saturday, I finally faced my fear of diving headfirst into something new. My team tasked me with the frontend of our project, using Bootstrap, a framework I haven’t even heard of. But through the power of ingenuity and Google I was able to scrape together enough knowledge to put together what I wanted to make, even if it wasn’t pretty. If there’s anything concrete I learned, it’s how to make a web app using Bootstrap. On Sunday, I learned about what it is like to code given several constraints: limited people (less than what we started with), limited energy (given the lack of sleep), and limited time (we had until noon to be done). This taught me about “crunch-time” in computer science in a hands-on way.
    Immediately after the event was over, I was eager to repeat it. Hackathons are good for so many things, most especially learning new things quickly and being able to focus on just coding for a set amount of time.

  8. When I was going to BuiltWorlds I felt pretty excited because I have been to other hackathons in high school and was looking forward to 36 hours of learning and creating cool projects. I learned a lot about how much planning and communication goes into making a good group project and what it takes to present a prototype at a hackathon given a limited amount of time and resources.
    Going to BuiltWorlds helped me understand more about async programming and working with images as well as the importance of communicating ideas in order to turn them into an organized and put together reality. I learned how computer science works best when specialized people are about to communicate effectively to implement an inter disciplinary solution. I would definitely go to more hackathons as they are a great place to learn about pitching and building ideas.

  9. I was pretty nervous going into the Hack-A-Thon because I wasn’t sure if I was going to end up being of any use since I felt as though I was not on pair with my coding skill as much as my other teammates. Walking in I felt like every thing was against me really doing what I felt as my best. This lasted until the end of the problem presentations even trying to follow what was being said during the presentation was confusing enough. I feel like I understand more about the balance that you need to bring with you to a Hack-A-Thon. Learning the methods to have the end result be a simple working version of the product or idea. That correctly displays the idea. Without leaving any room for questioning about the product, simplicity is key! Even just seeing what my teammates were doing while coding helped me understand new techniques that I would not have learned without having seen it firsthand. Also, I learned much about leading and being one of the two creative heads for the project. I definitively am going to go to more Hack-A-Thons just because of the amount of experience that can along with the project and the networking connections that come along with it as well.

  10. Leading up to the hackathon I felt a mix of excitement and nervousness. It was my first time attending a hackathon, so I didn’t really know what to expect, but it seemed like it also could be a lot of fun. After the problem presentations I felt like I was in way over my head and hadn’t the slightest clue where to start with any of them, and once I got with my team and we got to work this feeling was only exacerbated. But by the second half of day 2 I started to figure out what I needed to be doing, got some things happening on the screen, and started to have a lot of fun with my teammates.
    Something new that I learned was how to use motion/object tracking, specifically with opencv. Of course I didn’t master it in one weekend, but after playing around with it for a bit I feel that if I end up doing more with motion tracking in the future, it won’t be too difficult to get started with it. I also got to brush up on my skills with python, which I haven’t used in a couple years.
    I think I would like to attend another hackathon in the future, but probably not for a while. It was pretty draining and took up a whole weekend, which is usually when I get caught up and recharge. But it was a lot of fun and I learned a lot, so any hackathons I can attend in the future will definitely be worthwhile.

  11. When I signed up for the Builtworlds Hackathon I honestly did not know what to expect. I knew, going in, that there were going to be some companies going in there with a bunch of challenges for students to solve. With my limited knowledge, I was very nervous at first about how much I would be able to contribute to any team that I would join. At the start I simply had a very basic knowledge of coding in Python and HTML.
    When I got into a group and we got working on a problem, it was not immediately evident that this problem would be so complex. Because of this complexity, I ended up learning A LOT more about computer science. I learned how to use JavaScript, CSS, and other tidbits from different languages. I also learned how to use GitHub from the command line, which is very helpful for my ITMD class. I also expanded on my knowledge of Java and Python while working on our project.
    I would love to attend another hackathon in the future. A member of our team said something that really stuck with me throughout the process, “Either you win or you learn.” Ultimately, even if you do not win the prize money, you win by learning more about this world that we live in. This, to me, seems like an extremely productive use of my time, and that is why I would attend another one if possible.

  12. This was my very first hackathon that I attended, and I was very nervous. I knew that I would need to stay up late hours to code and to help my team. I was also not aware of the scale of the problem we were gonna get, and that turned out to be a problem. The problem was pretty complex that my teammates and I did not know where to start from. I was pretty grateful to have my teammates to like teach me about Javascript, server side coding, etc. The most challernging part was to basically be able to work productively while running on low sleep. Diagnosing the problem was also pretty hard. There were many obstacles that I had to try to understand in order to overcome. Overall this was a fantastic experience for me and I will definetely look forward to another hackathon.

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