DALL-E: Two banana slugs coding on laptops

Update

The largest hackathon on the central coast is ON! Cruz Hacks 2023 has been rescheduled to February 3-5. Mark Adams - co-founder of Cruz Hacks - will speak during the Welcoming Ceremonies. Mark Adam, Brent Haddad, and Doug Erickson are the founders of Cruz Hacks aka Hack UCSC. Each year, a new student team volunteers to lead and manage the event. It has grown from 100 participants to over 600. Participants learn new skills, connect with community, and build innovative new projects, the seeds of a startup.

Interview with Tony Ma

As we approach the 11th annual CruzHacks this weekend (update: originally January 13-15, event has since been postponed due to weather), we interviewed Tony Ma, 3x CruzHacks participant, and President & Treasurer of this year’s hackathon. Each year, we work with students who are eager to learn how to manage a hackathon. The program has been a tremendous success for students who want to learn new skills and engage with the community. Santa Cruz Works will cover the event with photos and articles next week. We will also select the top 6 projects to present at an upcoming New Tech monthly event.

Santa Cruz Works: Welcome, Tony. Tell us about yourself.

Tony Ma: Hello! My name is Tony. I'm in my fourth year at UCSC and I'm double majoring in computer science and technology and information management. I attended my first CruzHacks in my freshman year, in 2020. I was really inspired by the team that year. So I applied to be part of the organizing team for 2021. This is my third year organizing CruzHacks, and my second year as co president.

Santa Cruz Works: Have you participated in other hackathons before Cruz Hacks?

Tony Ma: CruzHacks was my first hackathon, but I have done other hackathons since. I've been a virtual participant at a few other hackathons, such as HackSC from the University of Southern California.

Santa Cruz Works: How does this year's in-person event compare to past virtual events?

Tony Ma: It's a big change. For example, we'll have a live opening ceremony, and a live closing ceremony with in-person judging. Live judging was one vital aspect that was missing from the virtual years. In 2021 and 2022, we essentially switched to an asynchronous model of judging where people would submit videos and our judges would just look over them and look over their submissions and make a determination that way. This year we're moving back to the Expo format where essentially students will have to actually talk to the judges and tell the judges about their projects. Additionally, workshops are coming back in person. We're bringing back food in person for all of our attendees.

Santa Cruz Works: I hear that you have some pretty big sponsors this year, including Niantic.

Tony Ma: We're really excited to have Niantic on board as one of our top sponsors, specifically Niantic Lightship and Niantic 8th Wall. We recently did a pre-hackathon workshop with Niantic Lightship. Participants are super excited to develop projects with Niantic tools. Niantic will be speaking at our opening ceremony, and they'll be running a few workshops to help show off their tech and help get students get started on Niantic tech. Niantic will also run two of their own prize tracks as well. So we're really excited for students to go and try out their tech and try to win the prizes in the Niantic tracks.

Santa Cruz Works: What are some of the themes for this year in terms of projects and how, if anything, has it changed over the past three, four years?

Tony Ma: We still revolve around social good, so most of our core tracks remain the same from the past three years: Justice, Sustainability, and Health. We've added a fourth track: Fintech. It essentially tries to make the financial system more approachable. The core focus is still around social good. We do have subcategory tracks that connect with category prizes: First Timer - so beginners can experience the fun of a hackathon. We have New Technologies – a focus on AI or Machine Learning, VR Blockchain, etc. There is a Slug Hacks category which is more focused locally on our own campus. And there is UI/UX for graphic artists and designers who want to build engaging user experiences.

Santa Cruz Works: Who is the ideal participant at CruzHacks?

Tony Ma: So we see a good mix of experienced students as well as first-timers. In fact, we see a lot of first-timers applying and that's good. That means that they're trying to explore and explore and figure out if either tech is the best career path for them or they're trying to figure out how to take their first steps in making a project that will help them in the future get a job. Or, they're just enthusiastic about tech. Most of our students are UCSC students, but we see students from other universities as well, including San Jose State University, UC Berkeley, a few from UC Irvine, and UCLA as well.

Santa Cruz Works: I remember our first CruzHacks over ten years ago now. I think we had 110 participants, and only four or five were women. What percentage of this year's CruzHacks consist of women?

Tony Ma: Around 30% of our participants are women. We also have 3-4% non-binary participants, and 4-5% who declined to state their gender.

Santa Cruz Works: How many have registered to attend?

Tony Ma: We had around 800 registrants, and we accepted 622 of them.

Santa Cruz Works: Very exciting. Looking forward to seeing you at CruzHacks!

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