Last month, I took part in my first-ever hackathon, Hack@Brown, Brown’s annual 24-hour coding challenge and won! You can read more about my team’s hack at http://challengepost.com/software/holoscreen.

I had heard of hackathons before but always felt like they were out of my reach. Even the name was somewhat intimidating because I didn’t think I’d ever “hacked” anything before. In reality, the hackathon environment was extremely welcoming and I didn’t feel out of place at all.

In addition to hundreds of other helpful hackathon participants, there were many mentors from tech industry giants such as Microsoft, Facebook, and Dropbox, as well as countless other companies and startups who helped participants with their coding projects (a.k.a “hacks”).

After almost 24 hours of work and too little sleep, we were dazed and confused to find ourselves as finalists in the hackathon, presenting on stage to hundreds of other students, professors, and people from the tech industry.

And what a wonderful surprise! All in all, it was a great experience and hopefully I can participate in more hackathons to come.