During the school year, students at many schools across the country choose to dedicate a weekend of their semesters to a dynamic and creative environment for coders and designers: The Hackathon. Only a few weeks ago, MIT hosted its largest Hackathon, HACKMIT, and this past weekend, Tufts did the same with its own Polyhack. These events can attract up to a thousand students from around the world and take place over the course of two full days.

From asking friends and family that are not in computer science related majors or fields, it is clear most people recognize that Hackathons are for individuals interested coding, at various skill and experience levels and last a few days. However, when asked what events or format the days of the Hackathon actually encompass, the answers become much less confident and way less accurate. They do not in fact only involve people working alone on their computers for hours on end. Up until a few weeks ago, I was skeptical and intimidated by the concept, but my friend convinced me to give it a chance, and was happy to find that the setup is much more exciting and enjoyable than you may think and as intense and inspired as you'd imagine. Here's a look inside the Hackathon experience!

First, people usually form teams and then are given the goal of producing or polishing an existing innovative idea and experimenting to produce the software or hardware projects inspired by their idea as best they can! The ideas don't have to be made up on the spot, although they often are, and they are often crazy and incredible.

Then, after a opening ceremony, featuring a slew of keynote speakers, hacking starts. The teams break of and do their thing, brainstorming ideas and getting going on producing their programs. The events go through the night, but to take a break from the work, they have pauses from meals times and fireside chats to midnight excursions.

After a full night of time to work with your team, hacking stops and expo-style judging starts and panel and sponsor judging follows soon! The hacks are presented and prizes are allotted to the judges' favorites.

While some flop, perhaps the coolest part of the event is a lot of the events prototyped in one night are later implemented and polished into amazing products in the next few months!

Happy hacking!