Introduction

For those of you who don’t know about Hack The North, it is the University of Waterloo’s hackathon (surprise surprise) which is the largest in all of Canada. Every year, more than a thousand people from all across the world, come to this University for a weekend of building. I’ll skip the stats and stuff since you can read them on your own on the site.

This year, Hack The North was hosted during the weekend of September 13th.

Before

T’was the night before Hack The North. I was packing my bags and getting ready to meet up with some cool people and make a great project. With wayyyy too much excitement, I got on the bus the next day at Carleton University. What was supposed to be a 6-hour drive quickly turned into a 9 hour bus ride with 30 others from Ottawa, Montreal, and the UK (?!!)

Day 1

After that very long bus ride, I got to meet up with some friends at UW and got some swag. Also the place looked beautiful! After lock picking our way into our room (yes, we literally shoved a key in the door to get in).

Also sidenote: Why does E7 look so good??

The second floor was FILLED with sponsors. RBC, Amazon, Citadel, and a lotta others. Got some dinner (not too bad) and some boba! The merch grind was fully underway. I made sure to leave extra space in my luggage just so I could pack more merch (foreshadowing: I needed more space). I couldn’t make it in time to participate in the Guinness World Record but the opening cermony looked really cool! They even had a whole band for O Canada.

Also I saw my physics teacher there because her daughter goes to UW (goated teacher btw).

And then I got a beavertail and met up with some Hack Clubbers!!

^ this image has Jenin, Kai, myself, and Rudy!! I also met up with some other coolios such as Neon, Selina, and Alaska!!

After that I setup shop in our room with my team and started speaking to sponsors for project ideas. I won’t go too deep in that but on the surface level we decided on a fintech project.

Day 2

I got absolutely no sleep (because sleep is for losers), but I was functioning just fine. Went for a nice walk outside with Sean at like 2 AM blasting some music (absolute vibe) and since the streets were deserted it was pretty nice.

This day was just another day of grinding but I also collected some goose games points for some very cool merch (got a water bottle and some stickers because they were out of hoodies :( )

Here’s me touching grass for some points

Honestly I feel like the whole concept of Goose Games was executed well. It made me get out of my room more and actually talk to people and socialize, and thats what makes hackathons so special. It’s rarely every about the winning or the prizes but the experience I get from it. My teammate (Karan) said it best, “I’d rather you guys try 80%, meet lots of people, have lots of fun, and not win rather than sweat off 100% and have no fun.” Okay maybe he didn’t say that exactly but you get the point.

I got a chance to meetup with Jeff Nguyen (the Boba Talks guy) and talk about stuff and got some merch. Very chill person and also a Kpop lover :D

I even got to talk with some Alum from our school and yap about how I’m getting cooked with IB and general cope.

Day 3

I didn’t sleep (once again) and decided to take a walk at 2 AM. I didn’t realize just how nice Waterloo was. Roamed the streets and went to the trains station right outside E7 and here’s the pic I took!

Right behind it was what I’m assuming a place for clubs and I saw a racing car (?!) like DAYUM I’d wanna work on that.

And then the final grind started. We finished our project in time, demoed and got a really cool sticker to add on to my collection of MLH stickers! Now was when I finally decided to take a sleep for a good 2 hours and met up with friends once again. The food was really nice and we headed off to closing ceremony!

Funnily enough, they had markings on the sidewalk all across campus to show directions and a lot of organizers leading the way. It finally came to an end.

Final Remarks

While we didn’t win, I am so grateful to even get the opportunity to join such an event. All the people I had met along the way made my experience 1000000000x better and I will forever remember it. The organizers and volunteers put soo much effort into Hack The North and it shows.

It was a fun ride; that’s bye for now!

Kashyap <3