A Hackathon for High Schoolers

Throughout the various collegiate hackathons that I have been to, there have not only been a few high schoolers in attendance, but many of the winners were actually high schoolers! Our goal here is to make hackathons less intimidating to high schoolers who can't code or who are beginners.

krrishd2• 12 years ago

Usually at these type of things a lot of them actually prefer to stay up (usually the ones who also attend collegiate hackathons), but many others who need a bit more rest do generally take naps.

TazeTSchnitzel• 12 years ago

Oh man, sounds fun. As a high school pupil myself, I'd go to one of these if there was one here (Scotland).

josephpmay• 12 years ago

You may want to talk to Ross Penman. I think he's done something with hackathons for highschoolers in Scotland.

https://twitter.com/PenmanRoss

RossPenman• 12 years ago

Ohai!

jx2zhou• 12 years ago

Also as a high school pupil myself, I think a great limitation for these hackathons is the location. I didn't participate in any until they came rolling into town (HS Hacks), and the distance means I'm definitely not going to be able to go to this one. Contrast this to the college experience, where one can more (I assume) easily sign up and just go.

norswap• 12 years ago

"hackBCA is open to all high school students, from the absolute beginner to the experienced developer. Spend 24 hours turning an idea into reality."

What can an absolute beginner do in such a venue?

jzone36• 12 years ago

We will have 100 mentors (at least that is our goal) to help beginners and many tech talks

jawerty• 12 years ago

Can't wait for this. Jared, you're the man.

ryanSrich2• 12 years ago

This looks awesome. One thing I'd like to see not only high school hackathons talk about but hackathons in general is encouraging non-coder participants. This seems to focus on "come here to code" or "come here to learn how to code", which don't get me wrong is completely awesome but there are plenty of other opportunities for non-coders to participate. Most notably people interested in design and business.

jzone36• 12 years ago

I think our main focus here is to promote CS high school education. There are definitely hackathons for people interested in design and business, but ours is mostly for people interested in programming.

ironchef• 12 years ago

I would say that MHacks (run by U of M) did a spectacular job with that and from chatting with some other organizers it sounded like this is becoming more prevalent at a lot of the college hackathons (like PennApps, etc.)

rjvin• 12 years ago

Shameless self promotion: we're having a hackathon specifically geared towards designers and developers working together: http://designandhack.org/

angersock• 12 years ago

I generally dislike having biz people cluttering up hackathons--I want to see projects, not slide decks. If you aren't a programmer, sure, come here, and learn to code; otherwise, you're a distraction.

pandringa• 12 years ago

Another shameless promotion: I'm part of an organization called Pilot (http://gopilot.org), and we're doing just that - planning hackathons for the students who wouldn't normally attend one. We've got a DC event coming up on March 29 (http://dc.gopilot.org), so if anyone's in the DC area we'd love to have you as a mentor!

ryanSrich2• 12 years ago

That's pretty cool! I actually live in the DC area. I'll definitely check this out.

MichaelTieso2• 12 years ago

Thank you so much for posting this. Sent this to my brother who is in high school. I wish this stuff was around when I was in high school.

jzone36• 12 years ago

No, thank you :)

MichaelTieso2• 12 years ago

Hey jzone. Looks like I may have been too late to get him a ticket. Has the event really sold out? Will there be any other opportunities to get a ticket? I'd love for him to check this out. Looks like a really great hackathon.

cridenour• 12 years ago

We're planning one of our next Startup Weekends to be high-school students only. We've had some student participate in the past and it has been great.

jsinger8728• 12 years ago

This looks awesome. HS Hackathons ftw!

_xhok• 12 years ago

I'm glad more efforts are being taken to get these things in front of younger audiences, but I must say, in high school I would've refused to join something meant exclusively for high schoolers. "Let me work with college students, damn it!"

rishid97• 12 years ago

#HELLYEAH

A Hackathon for High Schoolers

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