UCSC IEEE is a dedicated group of young engineers from a range of disciplines who come together to provide talks and workshops to enrich the education they receive here at UCSC.
We are the local branch of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers in the largest section in our region. We spend our time volunteering in the community, leading informative workshops, and putting on fun and out-of-the-box events. As a group we have put on weekly meetings and an incredibly successful conference; we have done project builds, including a drone and a tesla coil; we have run 3D printing workshops; and we offer printing services at a low cost to students. We are incredibly active and, as such, we have decided to take on another awesome event.
We always try to bring something new to our community. Our conference last year (The Technology of Today and Tomorrow Conference) brought in professionals from Google X, Microsoft, Seebright, and NVIDIA, as well as local entrepreneurs, to talk about emerging technology in their fields, and the conference was a huge success. Next we want to bring something new and innovative to the UCSC community. The Hack-y-thon is a unique event that brings together the urgency and innovation of a hack-a-thon with all of the finesse and subtlety of a monster truck rally. This competition was born out of the the “Sh***y Robot” initiative headed by Tested’s Simone Giertz. As she says, “You don’t need to be an engineer to be an inventor.” Because of this, we want to make this competition open to students of all backgrounds who want to learn to be more comfortable with the technology around them.
Now this idea may sound frivolous, but the purpose is to create a space where students are encouraged to experiment with hardware they may not have seen before and to learn from their failures. You may have heard the phrase “Fail early and often,” but not many students are taught how to accept failure and learn from it. We are putting these students into an impossible situation and encouraging them to fail so they can take risks and try something ridiculous. Our competition rewards lofty ideas, risk taking, and stepping outside your comfort zone. We hope to bring teams together to enjoy the spirit of creation.
With a traditional hack-a-thon, the overhead costs are mainly food and power supplies as most of these events are code-based. Our competition is hardware focused and, as such, we need to have parts, tools, and build materials. A detailed list of our projected costs can be found here.
Your donation will allow us to give participants a chance to work with parts they have never seen before and may not be able to afford on their own. With every donation we are able to allow more students from all disciplines to participate and learn together in a collaborative and fun-spirited competition.
Check out our website to learn more.
Thank you for supporting the Hack-y-thon!
