Institute Hosts Successful Local Hackathon with BUILDS

On December 3rd 2016, The Hariri Institute for Computing hosted BUILDS, Boston University’s (BU) student-run hackerspace, for a local hack day. BUILDS is a unique entity at the University that provides students with all the tools and resources for leading collaborative student tech projects.

The hack day, which is a 12-hour event that brings together local hacker communities from all over the world to celebrate building awesome technology, was an overwhelming success. Throughout the day, over 45 students participated in the event with a common goal to innovate new technology. “It was a great event overall, with respectable turnout, a surprisingly low attrition rate, and some really cool projects on display at the end of the 12 hours,” described Mark Bestavros, who attended and helped plan the local hack day.

Bestavros credits the Hariri Institute for Computing for the success of the event, “It certainly far exceeded our expectations of what it was initially going to be, and that is due in no small part to the space and atmosphere the Hariri Institute provided. We had a great experience overall, and we would certainly be interested in doing this again sometime in the future.” Two projects of note included the development of an application that looked up future air dates of popular TV shows and a location sharing application created via google apps.

This December Local Hack Day was only the first of many hacking-themed events that will be held at BU during the 2017 MLH Hackathon Season.