WEHack: Springboard
SWE UTD hosted its first annual “WEHack: Springboard” event on April 17–18. The event was a mini-hackathon with events designed to educate beginners in hackathons.
During the Fall 2020 semester, UTD hosted its first ever gender-focused hackathon called WEHack. Medha Aiyah, current president of SWE, said this was a program she wanted to form because of the existing gender disparity issues in technology.
“I participated in HackUTD, and it was a really great experience,” Aiyah said. “I learned so much, but one aspect which I thought could be improved was the number of women who attended HackUTD. I talked to a couple other girls in CS that year, and they mentioned how they were intimidated to participate in this event. I realized hackathons are for everyone, but we needed to start forming a more inclusive environment to make people more confident to participate in other hackathons.”
Working with Alisa Thomas, former SWE president, Aiyah co-founded WEhack, where her connections through conferences and other hackathons helped in conducting the first all-female, non-binary uniting hackathon. In the event, there were 286 hackers from around the world and 16 different sponsors and partners.
Afrida Tasnim, the current director of WEHack, said the goal is to broaden that scope and reach more communities to promote discussion of underrepresentation in technology.
“The whole message of WEHack is to encourage more women non-binary representation within like the technology field,” Tasmin said. “Sometimes, people who are slightly interested in technology but are really new to it might not feel very comfortable in that type of environment. So the one way to combat that is to have a hackathon dedicated to increasing representation, encourage people to seek out skills, and feel comfortable being within the hackathon community.”
Springboard, a WEHack based event, is a hackathon focused on the details of the hackathon. Tasnim said this event is similar to a hackathon toolkit: a hacker’s guide to making a team, creating an idea, and utilizing resources.
“Our workshops are literally geared to very intro level stuff like intro to GitHub and intro to Devpost,” Tasmin said. “Those are like two necessary tools that help you be successful in hackathons. Having a workshop that’s like dedicated to what you need is kind of what we were trying to go for. Our main focus isn’t how beautiful or complex the project can be. It’s like, can you make a project within the 24 hours that has really good basic functionalities and still good enough to demo and present.”
Workshops included advice on how to demonstrate projects and how to develop basic websites and applications. Along with hosting workshops and guest speakers, WEHack conducted a hackathon within Springboard.
“Usually, in conventional hackathons, you will never know your rubric scores and how well you did in your demo,” Tasnim said. “Here, there’ll be judges, and they’ll score you on a rubric that we’ll give it to you. We’ll show you what to improve for next time for the next hackathon. We’ll show you that even if your project is not completely done, you can still show for it and win something pretty decent.”
Tasmin said people think that hackathons are about creating projects and winning, but it’s actually a hub of information and creativity.
“I hope through Springboard, they genuinely want to try to use these skills they have learned and apply that to other hackathons,” Tasnim said. “There’s always going to be this chaotic nature within a hackathon. It’s just part of the thrill. Once you get the hang of hackathons, you start enjoying the thrill.”
