Written by Fred Yang, JAMHacks V Organizer
The first hackathon I ever participated in was StarterHacks 2020, an in-person hackathon that ran in January 2020 before this whole pandemic thing started. At the time, I was honestly pretty intimidated by the idea of staying overnight at the University of Waterloo for 24 hours of straight, doing nothing but code.
If JAMHacks V is going to be your first hackathon, I’m sure you might feel the same way. However, don’t worry! Hackathons aren’t only about just pure coding and learning; they’re about having fun too. Personally, I was able to overcome my fears and have a great time, and I’m sure you will too at JAMHacks!
To potentially alleviate some of your worries about going to hackathons, I’ll share some of my stories from StarterHacks 2020.
The Green Glass Door
I actually attended StarterHacks with several members of the JAMHacks V organizing team—namely Trevor, Yina, Michelle, and Cristian, as well as some other friends.
At one point during the hackathon, we all decided to take a break and began chatting in a hallway. We played a lot of riddle/wordplay games (courtesy of Michelle) and, as we kept talking, some mentors and volunteers passing by joined us.
One of the games we played was called The Green Glass Door. The rules were simple: any word with a double letter can pass through the door, and any word without a double letter cannot. It’s a pretty simple riddle and most of us got it pretty quickly, but this one mentor that came to sit with us just could not understand. Heck, we must’ve spent at least an hour giving him increasingly more obvious hints, but he just sat there confused. It was definitely a funny experience and alleviated a lot of my hackathon fears, such as asking for help from mentors.
The Great Dance Battles of StarterHacks 2020
Often, hackers end up with a lot of pent-up energy from sitting around all day at a hackathon. When I attended my first hackathon, we ended up spending this excess energy by dancing in the hallways!
It was truly an experience—our team would be walking around the campus for a break and just start cruising down the corridors jaywalking or c-walking. We even formed a brand-new, groundbreaking K-pop group and rehearsed a couple group choreographies together! Trevor and I were also both interested in breakdancing, so we showed off our poorly-done freezes and moves to each other while laughing our heads off.
Late Night Poker
Late into the night, one of the volunteers who we met earlier actually joined us to just chill, because he didn’t really have any more volunteer duties to worry about at that point. We started playing poker around midnight—not for money or anything, though; don’t worry, we weren’t gambling.
I eventually went to sleep because I was too tired to continue, but by the time I woke up, some of my friends were STILL playing. I initially thought that I had just taken a 20 minute nap, but nope; they were just playing all night.
In the end, what I really want you to take away from this blog post is that hackathons are full of opportunities to have fun, not just non-stop coding for tens of hours.
At this point, the pandemic has changed everything, and JAMHacks is no exception. Things won’t be exactly the same this year, and this is something that we, as organizers, fully understand. This is why our team has been working relentlessly to bring you a fun schedule that is jam-packed with fun activities, so that you can make the most out of the event even if it’s online this year.
Happy hacking, and we’ll see you this weekend!
