Launching NxtHacks - Hackathon for High School Students

Not going to lie, it was tough.

I can’t say I knew what to expect from planning the first event, a high school hackathon, but it was definitely a bumpy road. I am, however, grateful to have learned so much from this whole experience. After all, you learn more from your failures than you do from your successes.

The NxtHacks journey began with a small but integral grant from organizers of National Engineering Month. This was the base for what we needed to launch NxtEng Canada. For those of you who don’t know, NxtEng Canada is a non-profit organization I founded to empower next-gen global leaders in engineering.

Our approach to NxtHacks was to allow both technical and non-technical projects; as long as the ideas had a social impact, they were welcomed. We wanted our high school hackers to think global. One does not need to know how to code to make an impact, but since the skill is increasing in importance, bringing non-hackers in allowed them to be exposed to different skill sets. Keeping the hackathon open meant bringing all different perspectives to the table, just like in a globalized society, to solve challenges.

Unlike a traditional hackathon, NxtHacks placed emphasis on design-thinking, feasibility, and scalability. The goal was for our hackers to take their projects beyond NxtHacks and continue developing them, as it was clearly unlikely that they would grind out a full solution to a global challenge in 12 hours.

The Hustle

Now that we had some funding, we needed to find a venue. My mentor, Navid Nathoo, connected me to some great venue spaces like OneEleven, TWG, and BrightLane. All beautiful spaces, but unfortunately we weren’t able to work together in the end due to scheduling conflicts and spacing issues.

Another one of my mentors and Director of Youth Programming at Ladies Learning Code, Carolyn Van, suggested I go to the DMZ’s Rebrand Launch Event and speak to David Kwok, their Community Coordinator. Unable to find him in the sea of attendees, the only person I got the chance to network with happened to be the Executive Director of the DMZ, Abdullah Snobar. I told him about NxtEng and our mission to empower next-gen global leaders in engineering through NxtHacks, and he was extremely supportive of it.

So we got the DMZ Sandbox for our 12-hour hackathon.

Funding was another challenge as the bulk of the money went to food and prizes. I fired off dozens of emails to various companies and a lot of the time, the answer was:

No reply.

I won’t go too much into the sponsorship details, but even the day before the event, I had pretty much accepted the fact that $400 was coming out of my personal bank account to pay for NxtHacks. Despite this, I kept hustling and managed to make it all work out in the end.

The Impact

I was blown away by the projects that came out of NxtHacks. Being able to give 70 high school students the chance to create something so impactful made every late night, every rejection email, and every cry of frustration, worth it. We had projects that worked towards eco-friendliness, fixing language barriers, improving technologies for the visually impaired, providing opportunities, and overall making the world a happier place.

My goal for this hackathon was to provide an opportunity to create change. When we think of “changing the world,” it seems daunting, but these NxtHackers jump started something in one day.

First Place: SpeakYourLanguage - Messenger Bot for Quick Multi-Language Translations

Second Place: FeedBuzz - An App that Helps Save Endangered Bees

Third Place: Pairent - An App for New Parents

Regardless of who ‘won’ the hackathon, each and every idea that came out of NxtHacks has the potential to be impactful and I hope to hear about their projects coming to life in the near future.

The Lesson

Here’s what I learned (also advice for anyone planning on hosting a hackathon in the future):

1. Start Early: As soon as you have a venue and date set, start marketing the event. In retrospect, event planning was easy compared to actually getting people to come. Could not have done it without my amazing team at NxtEng.
2. Ask for help and be articulate: Don’t expect other people to know what you want. If you have supporters, they will work with you to make it happen.
3. Delegate: Divvy up the workload amongst your teammates, and work collaboratively. Hackathon-planning is a lot of work.
4. Plan for the worst: Always have a backup plan, you never know what may pop up. During NxtHacks, internet issues came up, and nobody in the building had WiFi until 11:30 a.m.
5. Budget time for hiccups: Our pitches were rushed because we switched to pitch-style demoing (like Hack the North) without realizing how much extra time it would take.

Planning NxtHacks put me way out of my comfort zone and pushed me past my limits. There are so many things I wish I had done differently, but it’s good to cringe upon reflection, because that’s how you know you’re growing. In the end, knowing that my team and I paved a road for 70 high school students to make a social impact - it was worth it.

Acknowledgements

I have a lot of people to thank. Considering the circumstances, NxtHacks would not have happened without these amazing supporters:

Navid Nathoo & Nadeem Nathoo, Executive Directors of The Knowledge Society (TKS): These two make up my backbone and they’ve taught me so much. I wouldn’t have the courage to do half the things I do today if it weren’t for them.

Abdullah Snobar, Executive Director at DMZ: I never thought I would get a space like Sandbox for NxtHacks, but I’m so glad I could contribute to work towards Abdullah and the DMZ’s mission through the event.

Carolyn Van, Director of Youth Programming at Ladies Learning Code: The strongest woman I’ve ever met, always telling stories of what it’s like being a woman in tech. She continues to crush it and teaches me how to do the same.

Idas Levato, Director at StartUp Toronto: After meeting her at Go North, she was the first person who asked me to reach out to her for help.

Mark Kryshtalskyj, CEO of Rockstar Cafe: I’m so inspired by him and his willingness to support and contribute meaningfully.

Nahrain Hanna, Event Coordinator at DMZ: We probably sent around 20 emails back and forth getting the space ready. She worked so hard before the event and the day of, to make NxtHacks as great as possible.

David Kwok, Partnerships & Community Coordinator at Sandbox by DMZ: Extremely helpful in finding mentors and sharing the event on social media. Looking forward to working with him in the future!

Erica Lee Garcia, Venture Lead at Engineers of Tomorrow: NxtEng Canada started with her support. She showed us the ropes, did the intros, and got us on our feet.

Ronit Schwabe and Jessica Matthews, Project Coordinators at TakingITGlobal: Helping Hanlin and me out at the Sprouts Ideas Camp where we developed our idea. Also helped fund our event!

Nirmala Armstrong, Regional Councillor of the City of Markham: She jumped in when I needed help, and I look forward to building a successful partnership with her this year.

Sabtain Ali (CEO), Ahmad Saleh (President), Max Beacock (COO), Creating Change Together (CCT) Foundation: The CCT team was so open to working with me and they were a huge help on event day.

Charlie Feng, Product & Growth at Clearbanc; Jason Myers, Customer Success Lead at Ada Support; Justin Cechmanek, Mechatronics Engineer/Roboticist at Reforges, Daniel Code-McNeil, AI Expert at Ada Support, Michal Tajchert, CEO & Android Developer at Yawn: Could not have done it without these amazing, high-class mentors and judges.

Peter Stakoun, President at Toronto Hacker Club: Shared valuable insights on how to run events for high school students.

NxtEng Team - Hanlin Cheng, Roshan Sivarajah, Tayef Shah, Serena Poonwalla, Vaneezeh Siddiqui, Shaziah Gafur, Jeremy Phy, Anthony Chang: You guys rock.