On April 13 to 14, <hack> Cupertino, a 13-hour overnight hackathon for 13 to 18-year-old aspiring coders hosted by Cupertino Parks and Recreation and the Cupertino Youth Activity Board, took place at the Quinlan Community Center with over 65 participants. Participants were tasked to come up with effective solutions for this year’s secret theme: Accessibility.
Throughout this event, teens were provided dinner, snacks, and breakfast to keep them energized. The lobby was set up with fun recreational activities like table tennis, crafts, and video games so they can destress and socialize with their friends and peers. Exciting workshops about augmented reality and coding challenges were hosted to give participants an opportunity to learn and collaborate outside of the general parameters of the competition. Mario Kart and Ping Pong tournaments were held late into the evening to keep spirits high and provide a different source of engagement for the teens. Coding mentors put in a lot of time in the hacking room to help those struggling with their ideas or code, and judges from the Teen Commission and the private sector arrived in the morning to evaluate the awe-inspiring projects that our participants came up with.
A total of 18 projects were submitted. Our first place winners were The Funky Monkeys, Aravindkrishna Arivudainambi and Vyaas Baskar for CrossSight. Second place went to Big N Small, Dhanush Ekollu and Harjyot Singh Sahni for HearIt. Lastly, 3rd place was secured by oreos!, which was comprised of Aariana Shah, Riya Ganti, and Siya Singh, for Book-Easy.