Student Co-Directors Explain the Enthusiasm, Sense of Community Behind HackIllinois 2022

Student co-directors of HackIllinois 2022, Raghav Saini and Yi Shian Ho, understand that there is something at the heart of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s premiere hackathon that makes the work that goes in worth it.

Over the course of several months – and culminating from February 25-27 this year – more than 50 volunteer staff members combine efforts on several teams to prepare for HackIllinois. There’s a systems team that works the technology. The experience team ensures that every participant has as meaningful a time as possible. The outreach team works on securing sponsorships that allow for so much creativity to be possible. And a design team works to ensure that everything built has the look and feel of the event’s prominence.

It’s really a monumental task.

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And for all of it to come together, there’s an underlying factor that both Saini and Ho believe creates and sustains the energy needed.

“The most powerful descriptor of this event, to me, is that it is truly student run,” said Saini, a senior CS + Statistics major who completed his third year working on HackIllinois. “I think back to the first time I worked on staff, and the first two months were the most intimidated I’ve ever felt working on something. I had never been a part of something so big before.

“But there were two things that made it clear in my mind how special HackIllinois is to so many. First, it’s the commitment of the staff to pull off such an immense event. Second, it’s the way everyone works together.”

This year’s HackIllinois was virtual, after a period in which organizers hoped it could be in-person. COVID-19 fluctuations over the Fall 2021 semester and through the winter months caused too much uncertainty, however.

Still, more than 850 participants and more than a dozen sponsors experienced the energetic result that only HackIllinois can deliver.

Organizers filled three days’ worth of activities – going well beyond the programming-based hackathon challenge, to include sponsor-driven workshops and creative mini-events. Winners from the 36-hour hackathon came from various areas of computing – like data science, community and sustainability, and more. Each winner received a prize of $800.

Whether in-person or virtual, the event has a way of changing perspectives about computing. In fact, it did just that for Ho, co-director with Saini.

A senior in the CS + Economics major, Ho came to the University of Illinois from his home in Singapore. He gravitated to computer science after taking CS 125 with professor Geoffrey Challen.

Having never programmed anything prior to studying here, Ho enjoyed the challenge of Challen’s course. Despite early limitations, the encouragement he received from the professor caused him to press forward and delve further into computing.

Now, he’s finished his second year on staff with HackIllinois. What stunned him about the event more than anything else was the sense of community.

“It’s incredible and very difficult to replicate,” Ho said. “This is the ninth year that HackIllinois has been hosted in the Thomas M. Siebel Center for Computer Science, and we have past leaders of the event who still provide helpful tips to us through a group chat. We have sponsors who have stuck with HackIllinois since it first started.

“The current staff did an amazing job making sure everything came together, but I would say that we can take about 20 percent of the credit. The other 80 percent goes to previous leaders, our mentors, who built this into what it is and still come back every year to help guide us.”

After the years that have gone by, it still surprises those closest to HackIllinois just how important it is to others.