Carnegie Mellon University
January 15, 2013

News Brief: Registration Open for TartanHacks

Tartanhacks

Registration is open for TartanHacks, the 24-hour hackathon run by the student group ScottyLabs. This year's event, which will include teams from the University of Pittsburgh, University of Pennsylvania and Princeton University, begins at 6 p.m. Jan. 25 on the fourth floor of the Gates and Hillman centers.

Teams of up to four people will compete to develop the coolest computer applications, as determined by a panel of judges.

Amy Quispe, ScottyLabs director, says TartanHacks will feature new technologies built specifically for the hackathon, including a chat system that will make it easier to get help from mentors, a project submission system, and an event management system. Judges this year will include more CMU alumni, such as Harry Heymann of foursquare, and Hahna Alexander, a recent grad whose startup, Sole Power, is in AlphaLab.

Once again, a series of skill-building workshops will be offered in advance of the hackathon so that people who don't yet have finely honed skills can participate. In this second year for the event, Quispe said interdisciplinary teams will get extra emphasis, with special attention given to involving more design students.

Last year, 150 students - 30 percent of them women - and more than 40 teams participated.

In addition to ScottyLabs, the event is hosted by the School of Computer Science, Women@SCS and Project Olympus. Dropbox is the new "diamond-level" sponsor this year, joining Microsoft, Yahoo!, Andreeson Horowitz, Facebook, Capital One, eBay, Green Hills Software and Zynga.

For more information and to register, visit the TartanHacks web site, http://tartanhacks.com/.