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Hack Upstate promotes collaboration, sees attendance increase

Hack Upstate had three times as many participants as the ProLiteracy hackathon held earlier this semester, attracting a mixture of 150 students and professionals.

Now in its fourth year, Hack Upstate was held this weekend at the Syracuse Tech Garden headquarters in downtown Syracuse. The event, launched in spring 2013, promotes collaboration among hackers in upstate New York, boosting its technology sector as well as building a network.

Participants divided up into teams compete and are judged on criteria such as creativity and multidisciplinary collaboration. Along with the Tech Garden, AT&T and Syracuse University’s School of Information Studies were sponsors.

On Sunday afternoon, Tech Garden announced the winner of Hack Upstate was the team of Raymond Jacobson, a student from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Jacobson developed a program called Sprawl, which would expand bandwidth on the Internet. The grand prize was two GoPro Hero 3 cameras.

Meghan Walsh, a senior magazine major, said she participated in the hackathon for the first time because she wanted a new experience.



“I think it would be cool to actually see things like ideas translated into real things,” Walsh said.

J.D. Ross, communications director at the iSchool, said the iSchool has been supportive of Hack Upstate.

“Anything that we can do to help encourage the hackathon community in Syracuse in central New York, we would like to be a part of,” Ross said.

The event has attracted people from various places, including Syracuse, Rochester, Albany and New Jersey.

Kershaw said Hack Upstate is committed to being inclusive and attracting people regardless of background. He said even though most of the participants are students, there is always a mix of professionals and community members.

“It is really a nice heterogeneous mix of different talents, different skills and different personalities,” Kershaw said. He added that the number of women, minorities and out-of-state participants signing up for hackathons has increased.

Sebastian Sarbora, a junior computer science major at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, brought six hackathon club members to the event. Having previously participated in other hackathons, he said he would hope to “learn something new and make cool projects.”

Doug Crescenzi, an SU alumnus who is one of the founders of Hack Upstate, said his biggest takeaway from the hackathon is seeing people building new products and learning, rather than the competition.

“Folks will tell you that folks will learn more here in 24 hours than they will in a semester,” Crescenzi said.

He said the idea of establishing the hackathon came up two years ago while he was talking with his friend over a glass of beer. He realized there is a “tremendous amount of tech talent” in and throughout upstate New York, specifically in the Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Albany, Binghamton and Ithaca areas. However, he said the network and collaboration among them was insufficient.

“We knew that there is too much of a disconnect, so it was really important for us to figure out a way to bring these folks together,” he said.

Crescenzi said Hack Upstate was successful thanks to these underlining messages to bring tech talent together and to put upstate New York on the map as a technology hub.

CORRECTION: In the Oct. 6 article, “Hack Upstate promotes collaboration, sees attendance increase,” Tony Kershaw’s position was  misstated and he was only referred to by his last name. Kershaw is the innovation specialist at Tech Garden. The Daily Orange regrets these errors. 

CORRECTION: In the photo cutline accompanying the Oct. 6 article “Hack Upstate promotes collaboration, sees attendance increase” Minnow Software’s name was misstated. The Daily Orange regrets this error.





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