SquirrelHacks (HackISU)
SquirrelHacks (formally known as HackISU) was started seven years ago by a group of students at ISU with the help of Major League Hacking (MLH) - an international organization whose purpose is to expand the hacker community around the world by providing resources to students to start their own hackathons.
Since then, HackISU has only grown larger in numbers, attracting college students across the mid-west and the eyes of larger companies. As of fall 2019, HackISU will only be hosted during the fall semester, versus both the fall and spring semester, to focus our attention and resources.
I was involved with SquirrelHacks because I believe in the message we carry: Learn, Build, Share. Everyone starts somewhere, and there is no better place to do it but in an environment and community that welcomes and discriminates no person or major. It is inspiring to see what others can make in 36 hours, and I love seeing the accomplishment and enjoyment on others faces after everything is said and done. SquirrelHacks has also given me friends that I would have otherwise never connected with.
Fall 2019
I was the President and Sponsorship chair Fall 2019. My goal was to leave my legacy through teaching our co-sponsorship chair the ropes, so that they are able to take on the role next year. My role is to lead, guide, and support my fellow organizers in planning a successful event.
Check out the website for our event here!
Fall 2018
Our fall 2018 hackathon marked our 10th hackathon at ISU. For this semester, I took on Vice President and Co-Sponsorship Chair. With this, I was in charge of communicating with MLH, ISU event paperwork, ordering food, and taking care of venue services. I also mentored the other Sponsorship Chair, and continued to restructure our in-house sponsorship organization.
Spring 2018
I was elected the Sponsorship Chair for the spring 2018 hackathon. During my time in this position, I redesigned, both content and graphics, the sponsorship prospectus along with the way sponsor information is stored in-house. I was in charge with reaching out to companies, communicating professionally, follow-ups, event surveys, and being the point of contact during the event.
Fall 2017
I participated in my first hackathon fall 2017. During the event, I messed around with using HTML, JavaScript and CSS. I created a web page that implements a color picker package and music visualizer package. I had never worked with these programming languages before, and I took the opportunity to explore the programming community and work with different tools (ie. Github, Atom, CodePen etc.).
