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UPDATED: March 1, 2021 at 8:15 p.m.

Over 350 people from a variety of countries participated in Syracuse University’s fourth annual CuseHacks event this weekend — developing websites, applications and other programming projects over a 24-hour span. 

CuseHacks is a “hackathon,” or a competition where programmers converge to invent and code different projects, either on their own or with a team, and present their ideas for the chance to win prizes. 

For the past four years, the student organization Innovate Orange has coordinated and managed SU’s annual hackathon. The event is usually held in person, but the organization restructured CuseHacks to operate virtually this year, said Stella Yaunches, the organization’s secretary.

In its first year, only about 50 people participated in the event. Over the past two years, about 200 people took part. This year, almost 350 people from throughout the U.S. and around the globe came together, with participants joining from China, India and Algeria, among other countries. About 650 people signed up for the event.

“We (saw) almost three times what we normally get,” Yaunches said. “And the majority of our participants this year (weren’t) SU students, which is a big difference from normally. So, to see grow steadily every year and then, now, take a huge jump, has been really, really cool.” 

Despite the virtual format, organizers preserved many of the elements of the past three hackathons, including hourly programming workshops and networking opportunities with event sponsors such as Google and M&T Bank. 

The participants communicated over the messaging platform Discord, which gave them the opportunity to directly message mentors and company representatives, form teams and talk about their project ideas. 

This year’s event was sponsored by Major League Hacking, which provides funding and workshops to hackathon events at dozens of colleges. Innovate Orange applied to receive the organization’s backing, Yaunches said. 

CuseHacks participants could enter their projects into about a dozen categories, including a “Best Beginner Hack” category for those who are new to programming, “Best Hack for Social Good” and “Best COVID-19 Related Hack.” 

The impact of the pandemic was reflected across many of this year’s projects, even those not entered in the COVID-19 category. The team that placed third overall, for example, developed a web application called “Vaccine-Speaks,” which tracks people’s perspectives about the COVID-19 vaccine across different regions of India.

The team that placed first, Oakland University undergraduate students Andrew Dimmer and Harrison Lavins, created an application called “ScoreShare” that allows multiple users to collaborate in real time to compose music scores. 

Lavins, who is pursuing a dual degree in piano performance and computer science, said the idea was inspired by the increased need for virtual collaboration as a result of the pandemic. 

“Let’s just say (there was) definitely a lot of blood, sweat and tears for this one and not a whole lot of sleep,” Dimmer told the Zoom audience. “But we were very happy with how everything turned out.” 

The teams that placed second and third joined the event from Hong Kong and India, respectively. 

The opportunity that this year’s event provided for people around the globe to collaborate on programming projects was a fortunate consequence of the virtual format, said Kristopher Micinski, an assistant professor in the College of Engineering and Computer Science. 

In spite of the unconventional format, Micinski, who has served as a judge at CuseHacks for the past two years, saw the same amount of passion and excitement in the projects that participants produced this year as in the past. 

“The fact that it had to be online opened up some new opportunities,” Micinski said. “It’s presented some new challenges, but I think it’s given us a lot to think about for the future in terms of integrating the best aspects of an online approach.”

CORRECTION: In a previous version of this post, the number of people who attended the CuseHacks event was misstated. The Daily Orange regrets this error.

Published on February 28, 2021 at 10:34 pm

Contact Gillian: [email protected]