WiCS in Review: HackOverflow

One of WiCS’s major events each year is HackOverflow, a 12-hour beginner-friendly hackathon. This year, the event took place on Saturday, April 20 in the Packard Electrical Engineering Building with the theme of E3: ethics, equality, and empowerment.

The HackOverflow team was hard at work during the week leading up to the hackathon, collaborating with other computing and engineering student organizations to host four different workshops on topics ranging from robotic systems to computer vision.

The Marketing team also helped design the hackathon logo, which brings together the 3 E’s in the theme statement.

In addition to T-shirts and drawstring bags, participants received lots of other swag donated by sponsors, such as beanies, canvas bags, and pajama pants! There were also plenty of food and snacks to go around.

Unlike most other hackathons, HackOverflow consisted of just 10 hours of actual hacking, making it approachable for new hackers and hackathon veterans alike.

The prizes, which included items such as Google Home Minis, polaroid cameras, and IBM inflatable couches, were announced at the end of the day. The Best Overall Hack award went to Robert Yang, Zixian Ma, and Juliana Lu-Yang for their project Sexual Assault Chatbot, which was built using Google’s Dialogflow as well as HTML and CSS. Sexual Assault Chatbot also won the WiCS Prize and the Pear Prize.

At the end of the day, students went home with coding projects, prizes, and a rewarding hackathon experience.