Windy City Hacks

June 22-23, 2019, 160 hackers came together for Chicago’s high school hackathon.

Nearly every attendee was attending their first hackathon. They created nearly 50 innovative projects, which were judged by some of the coolest people in Chicago.

Though Chicago is the third-largest city in the US, Windy City Hacks was one of the only high school hackathons in the city all year. We set a new precedent for what making looks like for Chicago youth.

Four workshops taught the basics of making attendees’ first websites & games, a web-based synthesizer, and even AI robots!

Attendees hacking at the personal website workshop

A team working on their project

Hackers worked through the night to create nearly 50 mindblowing projects (most of them were beginners!)

The next morning, projects were judged by a panel of 9 industry professionals from Chicago.

A team presenting their project to a panel of judges

Our winning team!

Our winning team made Habit@, a simple web app gamifying sustainability by helping you build & maintain lower-carbon habits.

Ice cream at midnight? Yep. 🍦
2am dance party? We did it. 💃
Random fruit roll-up giveaways throughout? Yum. 🍭

An assembly line of goodies at the midnight snack

Winning projects

Press

Origami Risk Hosts 155 High School Students for 2019 Chicago “Hack-a-thon” 2019-07-11, origamirisk.com

Judges

Abril Vela CS4All coordinator @ Chicago Public Schools. Associate board member of We All Code. she/her
Nate Kontny CTO @ Rockstar Coders, writer, and vlogger. Prev. CEO of Highrise, 2x Y Combinator alum. he/him
Mig Reyes Director of Product Design @ Sprout Social. Former President of AIGA Chicago. Prev. led design at Trunk Club, Basecamp, & Threadless. he/him
Mica Alaniz Engineer @ Democratic National Committee, speaker @ Write/Speak/Code, Girlcon, Latinas in Tech & more, mentor & teacher. she/her
Kieran Delaney Department Chair: Graphic Design / Interactive Media & VFX / Animation @ Flashpoint Chicago. Mentor & teacher. he/him
Sean Kim Founder @ Chicago Hacks, Hack Chicago, & Code 211. VP of Kappa Pi Beta @ UIC. Hacker, creator, mentor. he/him
Jake Albaugh Director of Platform Strategy @ Vinyl Me, Please. Former Engineer @ CodePen. Tinkerer, hacker, & mentor. he/him
Tatyana Shestopalova Entrepreneur, mathematician & web developer. Technical Product Manager @ 4Degrees. Founder @ letsgifton.com. she/her
Zach Latta Founder of Hack Club. Thiel Fellow & Forbes 30 Under 30. Always building. he/him

Team

Matthew Stanciu Founder, lead. he/him
Lachlan Campbell Branding, operations. they/them
Ava Scherocman Marketing lead. she/her
Theo Bleier Software, operations. he/him
Joy Liu Marketing. she/her
Michael Parekh Marketing, logistics. he/him
Amogh Chaubey Logistics. he/him

Special thanks to

Adriana Zalloni Venue point of contact @ Origami Risk, logistics queen. she/her
Max Wofford Guest mentor from Hack Club. he/him
Chris Walker Guest mentor from Hack Club, photographer, workshop teacher. he/him
Fernanda Lozano Helper from Hack Club, wonderful human. she/her
Moira Hardek GitHub guru. she/her
Mingjie Jiang Tireless mentor. he/him
Melody Starling Games workshop teacher, mentor. they/them
Michael Destefanis Hack Club Bank hero, amazing helper. he/him