Hacked?

     Yesterday I attended my second Hackathon, which was hosted by the San Francisco tech company Mulesoft. In contrast to my very first hackathon, which was populated by rather unwashed college students, the Mulesoft Coding Cup was only for high school and middle school girls, making it a much more comfortable environment for beginners.

     For those of you who are unclear on what a Hackathon is, the Google describes it as " an event typically lasting several days, in which a large number of people meet to engage in collaborative computer programming." While that statement is not false, I feel like this picture is an adequate description of a hackathon as well.

Hacking is a full body and mind sport.

     As I entered the warehouse-esque office in the heart of downtown SF, I felt bubbles of anticipation rising within me. I was going to hack!  Soon we settled down into our teams and got to work, with Macs and PCs littering the floor as girls got into serious conversations discussing which API best fit their program.

     

    Connecting with the other hackers and mentors was almost as fun as the hacking itself. These were talented girls coming in with a mission to code, yet the stereotypical vision of nerds with glasses was missing (except for me, of course). However, the undercurrent of competition made it very clear that these coders were in it to win it. As we got to work on App Inventor, a quick survey of the room would yield an image of girls of all shapes, sizes, and colors, not just hunched over a computer screen typing away, but also laughing and discussing with each other the pros and cons of the newest IOS software update. In other words, it was a geek haven.

Seeing a T-Rex with Oculus Rift was quite the experience. Jurassic Park, anyone?

     Aside from an ample supply of snacks and code, the hackathon also presented us with various professionals to give talks on the technology industry. I was in awe as I witnessed Ellen Spertus, the creator of App Inventor and a Computer Science professor at Mills College, explain how code is an enabler that transforms us from consumers to producers. 

In which I try to subtly try to capture an image of Ellen.

     In another talk, Maren Lau, the CMO of Internet Media Services, Skype-called in from Buenos Aires to discuss the prominence of technology in our lives. While there were a number of female full-stack programmers, I could not help but notice how many "representatives" of the female gender in the technology industry were in fields such as marketing and public relations.

     Coincidentally, I was reading Sheryl Sandberg's book, Lean In, that weekend. In her story, she brought up the point how women were expected to drop their careers in order to raise a family. On my very own hackathon team, there was a girl whose mother used to be a software engineer for Sony. However, when she left to have a child, her job was taken by someone else. Now, the mother works for marketing, no longer a programmer.

     I went into the hackathon expecting to have a good time and learn something new. However, I came out of it wondering about my own career and how I should approach it. While it was important for me to go out and have new experiences and challenges,  I also learned that it was a mission for each one of us leaving the Hackathon to spread belief in the potential of other girls to do whatever they want, regardless of societal expectation. As evident through all the creative projects that teams came up with in a short span of coding, I have a strong belief that that message will get through.

The CatCoders!!!

     All in all, I had a great time being flopped across bean bag chair while furiously racing against the clock to finish the code in time for the integration of a Twitter API into a gaming connector. Actually, the coding bit was quite stressful, but ultimately rewarding once we finished! Swag bags also made the whole trip worth it :)

Hope to see you on my next adventure!
~Kaitlyn