An intro to DivHacks: A Quick Convo with the HX Leaders

By Anita Hua SEAS 26

Hi Everyone! I am Anita. To help you all understand DivHacks better and to give a shoutout to the HX leaders, I did a Q&A session with the HX leaders, Seyoung Ree (25', South Korea) and Alayna Nguyen (25', Vietnam), and asked about their opinions on this year’s DivHacks.

There are some abbreviations I would like to mention. AN is for Anita, which is me, S is for Seyoung, and AL is for Alayna. Enjoy reading!

AN: Could you please introduce yourselves? What are your majors, and what are your roles in DivHacks?

S: My name is Seyoung. I major in computer science, and I am the hackers’ team instructor in the DivHacks organizing team.

AL: Hi I’m Alayna. I’m also studying computer science, and I am the hacker experience director for this year

AN: Why are you drawn to Divhacks? What elements of Divhacks attract you?

S: Having always been a participant, I have seen how the leaders of previous events seamlessly weaved together many fun and meaningful activities. So, this year, I want to try the organizing side myself. I think it will be challenging and enjoyable.

AL: My answer is similar to Seyoung. I have also attended many hackathons in the past, but the recent ones were all held virtually, and I am very excited for us to go in person for the first time after a very long wait.

AN: So were both of you in the hackathon last year?

AL: We both signed up for it, but neither of us were able to attend. We really regretted it and will make up for it this year.

AN: How much do you have to work every week in preparation of the event?

S: Usually we meet up seriously once a week, but we also correspond with each other frequently throughout the week, working a lot to prepare for the hackathon.

AL: It was a lot of fun, though. It was never tedious. To be a little more specific, we have the organizers’ meeting every week as well as sub-team leaders’ meetings, such as meetings for the hacker experience team.

AN: What are your personal favorites amongst all the activities in the hackathon?

AL: At the beginning of the Summer, to gain inspiration, we spent some time researching other collegian hackathons and seeing what events they had. From those we picked out our favorites and brainstormed activities to fill out the gaps. Personally, my favorite on the schedule right now is the Spicy Ramen Challenge. I think it will be a lot of fun.

S: I was about to say Spicy Ramen Challenge too. Another favorite of mine would be the typing competition. Since a lot of my friends have been very obsessed with typing speeds, this would be a great opportunity for us to see who is the real gold medal typist.

AN: The theme for this year is diversity. How do you plan to show that in the event?

S: The hackathon attracts a diverse circle of hackers with experience in different fields and who are from different backgrounds, class, and genders. We also want to cater to hackers with different levels of experiences. So, for example, during team formations, we would organize teams with both experienced hackers and novices to keep things diverse and fair.

AL: Also, our hackathon opens to students all across New York, not just from the Columbia community.

AN: How would you define sustainability, and how do you plan to show the theme of sustainability in this event?

AL: When our team was narrowing down a theme, sustainability was an idea that we all had in common. When planning every single activity in Divhacks, we have always kept sustainability in mind. So, for example, before the opening ceremony, we have a white board activity, where hackers will come in and answer questions across the room to visually illustrate the diversity of ideas. Initially we planned to do that post-its, but we thought using white boards would be more sustainable. We also kept the value of sustainability in mind when we crafted the swags for this event. For example, we are handing out tote bags and reusable items for our hackers.
S: We also have a brochure for the event, and, instead of printing everything, we will use a barcode to save paper.

AN: Two of the keynote speakers in the hackathon are actually Columbia professors. Can you tell me a little bit about them, and why you think they are a good fit?

S: One of the professors — professor Agrawal — is a mechanical engineering professor at Columbia, and he does very cool stuff with rehabilitative robotics. We are excited for our hackers to hear about his research.

AL: Our other speaker is professor Hirschberg. Not only is she a faculty advisor for Columbia Women in Computer Science, she also does incredible research on campus with Natural Language Processing, specifically identifying speeches: deceptive, empathizing… Her research really stood out to us, and we are very excited to see the perspectives that she will share with us.

S: Professor Agrawal will speak at the opening ceremony, and professor Hirschberg will speak on day two.

AN: After seeing the schedule for the event, I saw that the activities actually go very late into the night. Are all programmers night owls?

AL: Great question! Typically, people don’t really sleep at hackathons, and we want to organize some fun activities at night so our hackers can relax from the intense programming during the day. We try to make those events very low-key, like Scavenger Hunts, Tote Bag decorating events, and typing competition (maybe that one is not too low-key).

S: We wanted to pack as many activities in the short amount of time we have for the hackathon.

AN: Also speaking of the activities, there is a dance workshop. How did you come up with the idea, and what kind of dance are you going to introduce?

S: We came up with the idea when we were brainstorming. We both really liked watching dances, like K-Pop choreography. They all look very cool, but are difficult for people to learn by themselves. So we look forward to having a professional workshop leader who can teach us quick K-Pop dance moves. We think that this workshop can give people a short break, being set between the coding workshops, giving us a good opportunity to stretch and move around a little bit.

AN: Do you have any favorite K-Pop groups? I love Black Pink, personally.

*Everybody laughs*

S: They are coming back soon, and we are all very excited about it.

AN: We should go together to watch their concerts.

AN: What do you hope people could take away from the event? Ideas, awareness, passion?

AL: I think everything you said was spot on. We hope that all of our hackers will try something new, try a technology that they are not familiar with, and challenge themselves to something that they haven’t tried before. Specifically, one of our judging criteria is growth. We really hope that people will work in a team to challenge each other and to challenge themselves.

We also crafted our tracks in a way that it would not be too difficult to come up with a tangible hackathon project. We crafted questions to guide our hackers too. Overall, we are just very excited to inspire some hacking on the Columbia Campus!

S: We have a total of 10 workshops, and we really hope that people can learn something from these workshops and implement them into their own projects.

AN: Thank you so much, Alayna and Seyoung! The hackathon event will officially begin on September 23rd. Registration for the event will open on September 2nd. Anybody who is interested is welcome to join!