My first Hackathon! (DePaul x Northern Trust Case Study) pt.1
I applied as quickly as possible and to my surprise, I was selected to be a part of the competition! I was a part of a group of four. After reaching out to them, it just so happened that this was our first hackathon!
The competition had two tracks – Tech and Business. Being a Data Science student at DePaul, I picked to compete in the tech track.
Once I went to the loop for this two-day event, I realised that we had under 40 hours to build a front-ended application from scratch which allows users to seamlessly trade with currencies. This was an incredibly hard task at hand, but the excitement from STEM-hungry students was very much present in the atmosphere.
Additionally, there even was a workshop – one for each track. The tech side was able to converse with a SWE at Northern Trust, to address questions about both the case study and his role at the company as a whole. We heard very interesting things which fueled our motivation, and we went ahead and worked in our rooms with our teams again.
The hacking lasted many hours, and our team met each other again the next day at DePaul Center’s Concourse Level. With only a couple hours left, our team was feeling the heat, but that did not stop me from munching some pizza slices for lunch, provided by DePaul.
PLEASE READ PT.2 HERE!
Ever since my interest in STEM grew, I have heard at least a million times how you learn TONS from hackathons. While I did see this statement with some scepticism, it turned out to be completely accurate.
I received an email from DePaul CDM, urging me to apply for a DePaul x Northern Trust Case Study Competition. I was enchanted by this offer as I like Northern Trust. I had the pleasure of connecting with this company thanks to the recent career fair at DePaul. I have talked about it in a previous blog post (CLICK HERE). After listening to their incredible Data Analytics program by a current employee who also happened to be a DePaul alumnus, I wanted to attend this hackathon in hopes of getting more insight into my new profound spark of interest.
The event started in the Communication Building’s Concourse Level at DePaul’s Loop Campus. Then, we all made our way to the DePaul Center’s seventh floor. There, each team was given a room to work peacefully. Our group divided tasks and got to work immediately. At 12, the lunch was served. We ate delicious sandwiches and had access to sodas which kept us energised to power through this project.
The best part about this hackathon was the direct networking access we had to elite DePaul CDM and Driehaus College of Business professors, alongside key Northern Trust employees. They kept making frequent rounds to all the rooms, asking for assistance or answering any questions that we had about the case study. This was a lovely way of connecting and getting to know more about the end result they were expecting.
