Let’s say you’ve just come up with a once-in-a-lifetime idea, one that you’re sure will take off if given the right boost. You’re ready to take this idea to the next level, but between work and other life commitments, you don’t know how you’re going to be able to devote meaningful time to your project. You know you’re going to need a team, but are unsure of where to look, or how to get people on board. What’s your next step? You might want to look into signing up for a hackathon.
Hackathons are events where coders of all different backgrounds and experience levels can team up to collaborate and compete with one another in developing fleshed out tech projects. They're usually 24 hours or longer, creating an atmosphere that feels more like a camp than a work event, and many offer cash or other prizes to encourage a spirit of competition among the attendees. While programmers in attendance are indeed vying for the prize, there’s ample opportunities to connect with peers or mentors over your tech interests, and even the chance to pick up a new skill or two. The work accomplished at a hackathon often extends into real world innovation, and many successful startups from GroupMe to Talkdesk can trace their roots to an idea dreamed up at a hackathon. If you’re hoping for a chance to break from the day-to-day and really get your ideas rolling, these four hackathons in Oakland might be your best bet.
Oakland Hackathons To Know
- Powerhouse
- NERSC
- Hack The Hood
Location: Downtown Oakland
Overview: Tackling an issue as big as climate change requires all hands on deck, and that’s why Powerhouse hosts their SunCode hackathon to encourage attendees to work together to build clean energy startups. Their hackathon offers $10,000 in prizes to those who can devise a startup geared toward sustainable energy in a 24 hour period, and is open to anyone over the age of 18 who wants to participate. In addition to having time to build teams and brainstorm challenge solutions, SunCode offers the opportunity to meet with mentors from top local energy companies and to network with over 100 developers and designers in the clean power field. Challenges posed in past SunCode events have included transitioning single family homes to electric energy, optimizing electric vehicle charging platforms, and prototyping an e-commerce platform for consumers to compare and contrast energy-saving options.
Location: Downtown Oakland
Overview: Pretty much every company that relies on image display to power their products requires a GPU, or graphic processing unit. That’s why the The National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) created an event for writing innovative code to transform GPUs as we know them. Their hackathon is hosted over a five day period, during which teams of three to five people with knowledge of GPU codes come together to develop new code-based designs to better optimize their applications. While this NERSC hackathon is open only to developers with previous knowledge of coding, domain scientists in attendance will be able to connect with mentors well-versed in GPU technology to build on their computing and coding skills.
Location: Chinatown
Overview: There’s no shortage of students of color who have high aspirations and ideas for new tech breakthroughs. There is, however, an unfortunate shortage of opportunities for those ideas to gain the attention and support they deserve. Hack The Hood hopes to solve this issue in the Oakland community, providing education and training to under-resourced youth of color throughout Silicon Valley. In addition to their bi-annual bootcamps, Hack The Hood also offers year-round programs designed to guide attendees in working with HTML, social media promotion, site building, networking and other professional skills that will help them succeed in the tech world. The organization additionally offers small businesses the opportunity to outsource website design to youth developers in their programs, helping students build their resumes and develop lasting relationships with the professional community.
Location: Fruitvale
Overview: Tech is an industry brimming with creativity and promise, but often those creative dreams are shut behind doors that can only be unlocked with access to the right opportunities. In the hopes of making the tech world more diverse and inclusive, Google hosts a hackathon at their Code Next offices specifically designed to help students of color pursue their tech projects and ideas in a supportive and conscious environment. Code Next's programs and events are free of charge, in an effort to remove the potential financial blockades that prevent many students of color from receiving specialized educational resources. At the Oakland-based hackathon, students work together to develop apps and software that address social justice and climate issues, with past projects tackling subjects like police brutality and pollution tracking.
