Throughout the various collegiate hackathons that I have been to, there have not only been a few high schoolers in attendance, but many of the winners were actually high schoolers! Our goal here is to make hackathons less intimidating to high schoolers who can't code or who are beginners.
Usually at these type of things a lot of them actually prefer to stay up (usually the ones who also attend collegiate hackathons), but many others who need a bit more rest do generally take naps.
Also as a high school pupil myself, I think a great limitation for these hackathons is the location. I didn't participate in any until they came rolling into town (HS Hacks), and the distance means I'm definitely not going to be able to go to this one. Contrast this to the college experience, where one can more (I assume) easily sign up and just go.
This looks awesome. One thing I'd like to see not only high school hackathons talk about but hackathons in general is encouraging non-coder participants. This seems to focus on "come here to code" or "come here to learn how to code", which don't get me wrong is completely awesome but there are plenty of other opportunities for non-coders to participate. Most notably people interested in design and business.
I think our main focus here is to promote CS high school education. There are definitely hackathons for people interested in design and business, but ours is mostly for people interested in programming.
I would say that MHacks (run by U of M) did a spectacular job with that and from chatting with some other organizers it sounded like this is becoming more prevalent at a lot of the college hackathons (like PennApps, etc.)
I generally dislike having biz people cluttering up hackathons--I want to see projects, not slide decks. If you aren't a programmer, sure, come here, and learn to code; otherwise, you're a distraction.
Another shameless promotion: I'm part of an organization called Pilot (http://gopilot.org), and we're doing just that - planning hackathons for the students who wouldn't normally attend one. We've got a DC event coming up on March 29 (http://dc.gopilot.org), so if anyone's in the DC area we'd love to have you as a mentor!
Hey jzone. Looks like I may have been too late to get him a ticket. Has the event really sold out? Will there be any other opportunities to get a ticket? I'd love for him to check this out. Looks like a really great hackathon.
I'm glad more efforts are being taken to get these things in front of younger audiences, but I must say, in high school I would've refused to join something meant exclusively for high schoolers. "Let me work with college students, damn it!"
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What can an absolute beginner do in such a venue?