Over the weekend, the David Saul Smith Union was packed with a small army of hackers. Instead of criminal activity, however, these hackers worked together to create new apps and websites and make connections outside the Bowdoin bubble.
The second annual Colby-Bates-Bowdoin (CBB) Hackathon brought 36 students and mentors from around Maine for a 36-hour brainstorming and collaboration session.
The Hackathon began with a networking reception, where students met mentors and found like-minded potential teammates. Then, the clock started. With state-of-the-art hardware and professional guidance, students began to brainstorm and develop their projects. 
The Information Technology Advisory Committee (ITAC) organized the event in partnership with Bowdoin’s IT department. ITAC leader Andrew Haeger ’16 led the charge, with Alex Gentle ’18, James Boyle ’17 and Bella Tumaneng ’17 helping as well.
“A lot of people were really nervous about signing up because they may not have the depth of computer science experience, but there are a lot of ways for people to contribute, and you can learn a lot along the way,” said Andrew Haeger ’16, a leader of the Information Technology Advisory Committee (ITAC) who helped organize the event. 
“People were building apps and websites in languages they had never used before,” said Haeger. “While that can be tricky and challenging, you have a lot of time to do it and you have all the help you could possibly ask for. It’s worth trying.”
Teams chose a wide variety of projects, from mapping Twitter data to using virtual reality hardware.  
One team, “Debuggin’” began to develop a security and shuttle app that addresses recent concerns over student safety. The app, “Nightbear,” allows users to request a shuttle from their smartphone and alert security in any bad situation. Cory Alini ’18, Sophie Ardell ’17, and Vianney Gomezgil Yaspik ’18 brought different skills to the table to work on the project.
“Our original idea was to make it much bigger and basically make it Uber for SafeRide, but that’s a lot to do in 36 hours. So we worked on something that didn’t exist for Bowdoin already,” said Ardell.
“Depending on how uncomfortable you’re feeling, there are three parts,” said Alini. “Green is like ‘I’m walking home alone and I just want security to know where I am.’ Yellow is similar to green, but it has a counter and it will count down for 10 minutes. Then it would switch to red mode, which goes right to security.” 
Another team worked with the Myo Armband, which enables the wearer to control computer programs through movement of a wireless armband. Doyle, Franco Sasieta ’16 and Noah Finberg ‘16 met at the networking event and had never worked together on a project before.
The group’s goal was to set up the armband so that the user’s arm could act as the cursor on a computer screen. Although they didn’t complete the project, it was a valuable chance to work with new technology. 
“Instead of having an idea and picking how we were going to make that idea come to be, we picked the hardware and then were like ‘what can we do with this?’ We got the hardware components working, but we didn’t finish the website functionality,” said Doyle. 
The Hackathon at Bowdoin started last year, and is modeled on similar and larger versions of the event at schools such as Harvard and MIT. One of the most logistically challenging elements of the event, according to Haeger, was inviting several outside sponsors to offer hardware and mentors for the student hackers. LL Bean and Microsoft provided the bulk of these services, along with Major League Hacking, which governs student hackathons around the country.
“One of the things that makes hackathons possible is the sponsors, because they’re expensive events. You’re bringing in people, you’re feeding people. Stuff like that. So, we needed to find some sort of funding,” said Haeger. “President Rose decided that he really liked this idea, and he was interested in looking back at the sponsorship policies. Ultimately what we worked out was that IT department would be the sponsor behind the hackathon.”
In the future, team members and organizers alike hope to see more students for more schools participate in the event.
“The biggest thing is growth. It would be really cool to get 100 people in the event. It’s ambitious, and it may take a couple years to get there. But that would be the ultimate experience, to get more sponsors in here with more backgrounds, more students participating from different schools and different regions,” Haeger said. “You may have more connections and more job opportunities as well.”
Ardell agreed, mentioning how the capacity for student involvement was much larger than the actual participation. 
“I want to see more people who aren’t computer science majors there,” she said.” Everyone was like ‘I don’t know comp sci, I can’t go.” Yes you can. I didn’t know how to do anything this weekend before I got there.” 

Over the weekend, the David Saul Smith Union was packed with a small army of hackers. Instead of criminal activity, however, these hackers worked together to create new apps and websites and make connections outside the Bowdoin bubble.

The second annual Colby-Bates-Bowdoin (CBB) Hackathon brought 36 students and mentors from around Maine for a 36-hour brainstorming and collaboration session.

The Hackathon began with a networking reception, where students met mentors and found like-minded potential teammates. Then, the clock started. With state-of-the-art hardware and professional guidance, students began to brainstorm and develop their projects.

The Information Technology Advisory Committee (ITAC) organized the event in partnership with Bowdoin’s IT department. ITAC leader Andrew Haeger ’16 led the charge, with Alex Gentle ’18, James Boyle ’17 and Bella Tumaneng ’17 helping as well.

“A lot of people were really nervous about signing up because they may not have the depth of computer science experience, but there are a lot of ways for people to contribute, and you can learn a lot along the way,” said Andrew Haeger ’16, a leader of the Information Technology Advisory Committee (ITAC) who helped organize the event.

“People were building apps and websites in languages they had never used before,” said Haeger. “While that can be tricky and challenging, you have a lot of time to do it and you have all the help you could possibly ask for. It’s worth trying.”

Teams chose a wide variety of projects, from mapping Twitter data to using virtual reality hardware. 

One team, “Debuggin’” began to develop a security and shuttle app that addresses recent concerns over student safety. The app, “Nightbear,” allows users to request a shuttle from their smartphone and alert security in any bad situation. Cory Alini ’18, Sophie Ardell ’17, and Vianney Gomezgil Yaspik ’18 brought different skills to the table to work on the project.

“Our original idea was to make it much bigger and basically make it Uber for SafeRide, but that’s a lot to do in 36 hours. So we worked on something that didn’t exist for Bowdoin already,” said Ardell.

“Depending on how uncomfortable you’re feeling, there are three parts,” said Alini. “Green is like ‘I’m walking home alone and I just want security to know where I am.’ Yellow is similar to green, but it has a counter and it will count down for 10 minutes. Then it would switch to red mode, which goes right to security.”

Another team worked with the Myo Armband, which enables the wearer to control computer programs through movement of a wireless armband. Boyle, Franco Sasieta ’16 and Noah Finberg ‘16 met at the networking event and had never worked together on a project before.

The group’s goal was to set up the armband so that the user’s arm could act as the cursor on a computer screen. Although they didn’t complete the project, it was a valuable chance to work with new technology.

“Instead of having an idea and picking how we were going to make that idea come to be, we picked the hardware and then were like ‘what can we do with this?’ We got the hardware components working, but we didn’t finish the website functionality,” said Boyle.

The Hackathon at Bowdoin started last year, and is modeled on similar and larger versions of the event at schools such as Harvard and MIT. One of the most logistically challenging elements of the event, according to Haeger, was inviting several outside sponsors to offer hardware and mentors for the student hackers. LL Bean and Microsoft provided the bulk of these services, along with Major League Hacking, which governs student hackathons around the country.

“One of the things that makes Hackathons possible is the sponsors, because they’re expensive events. You’re bringing in people, you’re feeding people. Stuff like that. So, we needed to find some sort of funding,” said Haeger. “President Rose decided that he really liked this idea, and he was interested in looking back at the sponsorship policies. Ultimately what we worked out was that IT department would be the sponsor behind the hackathon.”

In the future, team members and organizers alike hope to see more students for more schools participate in the event.

“The biggest thing is growth. It would be really cool to get 100 people in the event. It’s ambitious, and it may take a couple years to get there. But that would be the ultimate experience, to get more sponsors in here with more backgrounds, more students participating from different schools and different regions,” Haeger said. “You may have more connections and more job opportunities as well.”

Ardell agreed, mentioning how the capacity for student involvement was much larger than the actual participation.

“I want to see more people who aren’t computer science majors there,” she said.” Everyone was like ‘I don’t know comp sci, I can’t go.” Yes you can. I didn’t know how to do anything this weekend before I got there.”