Hack The North — 36 hours, 1,000 students, hundreds of awesome ideas

Thursday, September 11, 2014

One thousand of the brightest students in the world will spend 36 hours next weekend at the University of Waterloo — at the largest international hackathon in Canada.

Hack the North, Canada's largest international hackathon Sept 19-21
Students from 100 different institutions will take part in Hack the North, the brainchild of a number of University of Waterloo undergraduate students.
A total of 2,500 applied to be part of the September 19-21 event that is attracting students from across Canada, all the U.S. Ivy League schools and from around the world, including the United Kingdom, Korea, China, Netherlands and Brazil. 

Through sponsorship support, the student-led Hack the North is fully covering food and accommodation for the students and the majority of their travel expenses.
   

Hackathon experience

The co-founders of Hack The North have been part of the hackathon community for some time and decided to bring the event north of the border.
We’ve experienced first-hand the transformative experience that a hackathon can bring about through learning, collaborating and networking opportunities. 
Kevin Lau, co-founder and second-year Waterloo systems design engineering student

All-star support

Venture capitalist and Waterloo Engineering graduate Chamath Palihapitiya will give the keynote address and Sam Altman, president of Y Combinator, will participate in a “fireside chat” with Pearl Sullivan, dean of Waterloo Engineering. 

Other events include “office hours” that will be held on Saturday for participants to spend 10 minutes meeting with successful entrepreneurs, including Eric Migicovsky, a Waterloo systems design engineering graduate and the founder of Pebble Technologies.

Along with its size, Hack the North is unique because the event doesn’t have a specific theme. The top prizes haven't been announced in order to avoid placing parameters on what participants develop, points out co-founder Liam Horne, a Waterloo computer science student.

It doesn’t matter who you are or what your experience is, you just need to show up and create something cool or awesome.Kartik Talwar, co-founder and third-year Waterloo science student

The definition of just what’s cool or awesome will likely be vastly different for the teams of up to four members. “A lot of people will create something just for fun and to make people laugh,” says Lau. “At the other end of the spectrum we’ve seen viable and successful products piloted at hackathons.” 
 

Startup culture

With any luck, Waterloo Engineering's entrepreneurial environment will rub off on Hack the North participants — the Faculty’s start-up culture has helped create over 500 companies, including Pebble Technologies, Clearpath Robotics, Desire2Learn, Infusion and Thalmic Labs.

The Hack the North event has created an opportunity for our students and students from around the world to form relationships and work together to solve problems using technology.

Pearl Sullivan, dean of Waterloo Engineering

After almost a year since work on the event began, organizing team members continue to wade through long to-do lists and attend lengthy meetings without getting much sleep in between. Still, they’d like to make it an annual event. 

“That’s the plan,” Lau says with a laugh.  “Our goal is to get through this one first and worry about the logistics of next year’s event later.”                        

Please note: During Hack The North, the E5 building will be closed to students other than those participating in the competition.