First Hackathon Draws Students and Spectators to Library

Five NHS students took part in a “hackathon" at the Nutley Public Library last Saturday. A hackathon is an event where people who enjoy coding compete to create an original design (from scratch) within a certain time frame. People participating in a hackathon are given a theme for their design. However, participants aren’t told the theme until they arrive at the event. 

The event was set up by a group of NHS students. One of the coordinators of the event, sophomore Blake Hsiao, said, “I had seen a hackathon, and some of my group members have participated in competitions before, so we just wanted to do something similar.”

The hackathon was a part of Hsiao’s nonprofit, which he runs along with four other NHS students. The non-profit is devoted to introducing and bringing coding to younger students in Nutley. Hsiao said, “We are working on the bridge of STEMEPA. Basically, we’re under the larger organization STEMEPA, which is the parent organization. We just wanted to bring STEM to different audiences where it might not be as prevalent.”

The hackathon was just one of many events the group hopes to organize, and organization members are already making plans for future events. In addition to the hackathon, the group mentioned their ideas for new events in order to spread the joy of coding and STEM. Hsiao said, “We definitely want to host and put on more events. It’s supposed to be all STEM-related things, so we were talking about doing something with legos and lego building sometime.”

The event had a good turnout, with around ten kids, thanks to the advertisement the group put together. While they didn’t fundraise at this particular event, they are planning to coordinate more events in order to raise money for the STEMEPA (which stands for STEM Enrichment of Pennsylvania) non-profit. 

Together, under STEMEPA, this group is setting out to bring STEM to other areas of NJ and more audiences, one event at a time.