Hack U™ team brings knowledge, innovation and fun to university campuses around the globe.
On April 9th, 2011, the Hack U™ team wrapped up the final event of the 2011 spring season at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), with over 80 enthusiastic CS students and 30 plus killer hacks. This was the perfect way to mark the five year anniversary of the program, which has evolved quite a bit, but, at its core, still focuses on teaching cutting edge Web development education and inspiring innovation. The cross-functional Hack U™ engineering team, which is volunteer-based, travels each year to various universities around the globe to teach students about the latest Web programming technology and then helps them build their dream application in the 24 hour coding competition that follows the two nights of tech talks.
"The hack program, in its original form, was made to take a special hacker culture and passion from within Yahoo and spread it worldwide through our external hack days. The Hack U™ program has extended that same spirit and opportunity to universities around the world and has empowered thousands of students of all skill levels to find a voice that many in the experienced development community have, while learning and experimenting in a fun, supportive environment," said Jonathan LeBlanc, senior Yahoo developer and Hack U™ evangelist. In addition to the now flourishing Hack U™ program in India, this year the team also brought the program to Spain, and we're thrilled to find that the Barcelona hack spirit is thriving!
The 2011 spring season of Hack U™ brought our team of Web gurus and hack enthusiasts to four US and two international universities:
"We are blown away by the students' seemingly endless creativity, drive and technical capabilities at these events. We saw everything from extremely useful apps designed to give autistic children better tools to learn with, to fun multi-player gaming hacks built using new HTML5 technology. Several of the students have gone on to further develop their hacks and have attracted the attention of VCs, technology companies and the media," said Jeremy Hubert, Yahoo Search Prototyper and Hack U™ lead. "The bottom line is that there's a certain type of innovative student who is drawn to the hack event and it's clear to us that these are the students who will be leading the industry and possibly even developing their own companies in the next five years."
Yahoo definitely understands that the benefits of this program go both ways. "Through our involvement in the program, we at Yahoo are able to explore the emerging technologies through the students, who will eventually bring those technologies to popularity once they are in the workforce. This allows us to keep current on what engineers and consumers care about, providing us with fresh ideas and a higher degree of relevance," said Subram Murali, Yahoo Mail Engineer and Hack U™ evangelist.
At Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), the Yahoo team has partnered with the business school and taken that entrepreneurial hack spirit to a whole new level. CMU's Hack U™ now includes a "
Hack Pitch" competition in conjunction with the standard hack event, where business and CS students work together to create a business pitch for each of the hacks developed. The event is well-loved by students and faculty guest judges alike. This year the event even caught the attention of a local venture capital firm, which saw it as a great source for new investment ideas.
This September, the winners from all campuses will fly to New York City to compete in the Yahoo Hack Idol competition where they'll join experienced hackers and Yahoos and battle it out for street cred, cool prizes and the opportunity to get their hacks noticed by industry judges, including venture capitalists, Web entrepreneurs, Yahoo executives and technology gurus. Huge congratulations to all of the winners and everyone who participated in the program this year! Check the
Hack U™ Web site in June for exciting updates and next year's schedule.
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