MMGA: Make MariHacks Great(er) Again
On April 5 and 6, following its sister hackathon BrebeufHx organized by Collège Jean-de-Brébeuf, the Marianopolis Programming Club hosted the 7th edition of MariHacks – Marianopolis’ annual hackathon – welcoming over 200 hackers from Montreal high schools and CEGEPs. Participants, with coding experiences ranging from beginner to advanced, competed continuously for 2 days to create unique code-based solutions to innovative problems suggested by the event’s sponsors.
This year, the College administration invited incoming students to a networking event happening on the first evening of MariHacks. Six science-based student clubs were present to showcase Marianopolis student life; they were Women in Science Empowered (W.I.S.E.), the Marianopolis Research Team, the Solid Modeling Club, the Math Club, the Programming Club and the Marianopolis AI Club. Moreover, sponsors such as Major League Hacking and National Bank were able to talk to students and answer questions regarding the coding challenges they provided.
To keep the event running smoothly, a team of volunteers and mentors provided workshops, food service and advice to contestants – as well as fun activities such as a movie night – to keep everyone motivated in finishing their projects. In this edition of MariHacks, contestants had the choice of submitting a project for the National Bank challenge or designing their own personal project. The best projects were presented to a panel of judges for the chance of obtaining prizes ranging from Steam gift cards to the latest AirPods. CEGEP contestants were able to stay over at night to continue working on their projects.
The organizer team started working on this project incessantly since September 2023. With huge pressure from the new responsibilities as well as their personal occupations, the organizers managed to host yet another successful hackathon for Marianopolis. When asked what inspired her to join the MariHacks 7.0 organizer team, Carolyn stated that “it’s nice to see the behind-the-scenes and know how this type of events are organized.” Another organizer, Stephen, joined to teach less experienced contestants. There is a general consensus among the organizers that it is important to provide this type of opportunities to students whether now or in the future.
Most contestants joined MariHacks for a challenge. Eric, for example, undertook the National Bank challenge because it allowed him to experience in the web development field for the first time. This particular challenge offered him a lot of data to analyze which he found interesting despite how tiring the hackathon was for him. Meanwhile, Shupeng stayed in the Marianopolis campus past midnight in order to improve her coding skills. Even though she believes that she has been “carried by [her] teammates”, Shupeng learnt a lot from her experience at MariHacks.
Next year, MariHacks hopes to improve accessibility for all participants whether it is by providing accessible Wifi password cards for late students or securing a more private place such as F-105 for contestants to rest. The organizers learned a lot from this edition of MariHacks and hope to pass on their knowledge to the future organization team in the spirit of “keep[ing] MariHacks great”.
Report by Luna Kang and Daniel Tang
