Auburn Hacks invites students to compete in "invention marathon"

For 24 hours this weekend, hundreds of students from dozens of universities across the country gathered in the Student Center ballroom for the first Auburn Hacks event.

Laptops and desktops scattered across long tables in the ballroom and sleeping bags stowed under tables showed that students competing were in it for the long run.

Fueled by caffeinated chocolate and energy drinks, teams of students worked to improve the infrastructure of “Innovation City,” a fictional city facing a breach of security in their medical records. Winners got prizes that included Apple watches and paid internships at sponsoring tech companies.

Not all of the students were experienced in coding. Auburn Hacks welcomed students of any ability to join a team and compete in technology and non-technology related challenges. They also held workshops where students could learn the basics of coding.

Auburn sophomore Jediel Fraser had never been to an event quite like Auburn Hacks.

“I’ve participated in some programming competitions in the past but never before a 24-hour hackathon where the result was one final project. So basically that experience of coming together and making one final thing was really appealing to me,” he said.

Ethical hacking is one of the latest crazes in the tech industry. As companies like Facebook and Google are looking for talented employees to solve their hacking problems, they're looking to groups like Major League Hacking to pull students from.

Major League Hacking puts on hundreds of hackathons per year at universities across the country and world. They also provide resources to students interested in careers in the computer science industry.

Auburn senior Jeriel Ng went to his computer science professor over a year ago with the idea for the event. He had attended several other hackathons across the southeast and thought it was something Auburn students would enjoy.

“So just like over the whole like past year during planning this it was like this abstract idea where we were like “I don’t know if people are going to react to this or not” but they really liked it so that was really rewarding. Just bringing people out here, showing them that computer science is something that you can really build a genuine passion for, and just getting them to be able to make a community and make friends like and meet new people here,” Ng said.

Ng said he received positive feedback from participants and is already planning for next year’s event.