Copyright Joliet, IL Patch
Dublin High School senior Kaushik Chandolu co-founded HowToHackathon the summer after his sophomore year after he saw firsthand how hard it is to organize a hackathon. “I came up with this hackathon after I hosted my first hackathon,” he told Patch in an email. “When hosting this event, I faced a lot of struggles when it came to figuring out what to do, how to find sponsors, how to advertise my event, and more. However, I had a friend with prior experience (who is now attending UC Berkley) who shared with me the knowledge I needed to plan a hackathon. My struggle planning my first event led me to want to ease that burden for other students who wanted to host hackathons, but never could. This led me to start this organization and pass down the knowledge I gained.” Chandolu has quite a bit of experience to share: he is currently the president of the city of Dublin’s Hack Club Chapter, which organizes computer science clubs and programs across Dublin High School, Emerald High School, and Fallon Middle School, and is also president of Dublin High School’s computer science club. He has competed in five in-person hackathons and six online hackathons. He’s used that knowledge in HowToHackathon, which offers help in obtaining sponsors, providing judges, advertising the hackathon to a 900+-member community, managing websites, and general advice in planning and logistics. The organization personally guides first-time organizers for free with step-by-step instructions for planning the hackathon. They also help them reach out to sponsors by helping them draft emails and coach them on what to say during meetings. They can provide access to a team of sponsors who have offered a total of over $2.7 million in prizes to over 40 hackathons. To date, HowToHackathon has helped provide over 150 judges from Fortune 500 companies and T20 colleges who have judged the projects of over 25,000 participants worldwide. They helped host a number of large hackathons around the world, including QubitX, Harvest Hacks, Cyber Hacks, Spring Hacks, Summer Hacks, Edu Learn, and many more. Anyone interested in working with them can fill out this form. Visit howtohackathon.org for more information.
