Harrison attended his first hackathon during his freshman year at University of Kansas when his mentor Ashley, the hackathon director, suggested he attend. There, he and a couple of friends created a game using the programming language, Lua. His team was completely surprised when they found out they finished second at the HackKU.
His sophomore year, Harrison ended up attending more and more hackathons and happily worked on the organizing team for HackKU. When the event wrapped, he was disappointed to find that there had been a drop off in attendance. The previous year, there were 170 hackers and now, there were only 50. Motivated to give back to the hacker community, Harrison was elected as director of HackKU 2018.
When he started organizing, he quickly learned that the reason there had been a drop off in attendance was because many of the experienced organizers had graduated, leaving the current organizers without adequate mentorship. In an effort to learn more about the planning process, he traveled to Hack K-State to learn from Mary Siebert, an organizer, about best practices and how she went organized her event.
As a result, he and his team were able to raise attendance from 50 to 240 hackers! An incredible improvement from the previous year. The University of Kansas went from an unranked school to 25th in the League. Harrison was able to give a talk at Hackcon VII on how to market a hackathon in the Midwest.
To this day, Harrison feels that organizing a hackathon was the most rewarding experience in his life. It was incredible for him to put in hours of work and see it culminate in an event and the direct impact it had on the attendees. Following the hackathon, several hackers emailed Harrison sharing the happy news that they had received internships from sponsors at his event.
With all of his experience from hackathons, Harrison has been able to land internships and co-ops at companies such as Dell working with RSA security, Garmin International, and Spreetail. In addition to these, he is in the Self Engineering Leadership Fellowship (SELF), a program where engineering students and business students develop their leadership skills through visiting speakers and courses.
His favorite project is from Hack K-State 2019 where he and his friends created their startup, Applican.ai, a platform that matches technical students with internship opportunities based on cultural and technical fits. After working on it at a hackathon, his team decided to make it more than just a “project.” They are currently in the development stage and working towards a full launch in the spring of 2020.
Quick Facts
Harrison attended his first hackathon during his freshman year at University of Kansas when his mentor Ashley, the hackathon director, suggested he attend. There, he and a couple of friends created a game using the programming language, Lua. His team was completely surprised when they found out they finished second at the HackKU.
His sophomore year, Harrison ended up attending more and more hackathons and happily worked on the organizing team for HackKU. When the event wrapped, he was disappointed to find that there had been a drop off in attendance. The previous year, there were 170 hackers and now, there were only 50. Motivated to give back to the hacker community, Harrison was elected as director of HackKU 2018.
When he started organizing, he quickly learned that the reason there had been a drop off in attendance was because many of the experienced organizers had graduated, leaving the current organizers without adequate mentorship. In an effort to learn more about the planning process, he traveled to Hack K-State to learn from Mary Siebert, an organizer, about best practices and how she went organized her event.
As a result, he and his team were able to raise attendance from 50 to 240 hackers! An incredible improvement from the previous year. The University of Kansas went from an unranked school to 25th in the League. Harrison was able to give a talk at Hackcon VII on how to market a hackathon in the Midwest.
To this day, Harrison feels that organizing a hackathon was the most rewarding experience in his life. It was incredible for him to put in hours of work and see it culminate in an event and the direct impact it had on the attendees. Following the hackathon, several hackers emailed Harrison sharing the happy news that they had received internships from sponsors at his event.
With all of his experience from hackathons, Harrison has been able to land internships and co-ops at companies such as Dell working with RSA security, Garmin International, and Spreetail. In addition to these, he is in the Self Engineering Leadership Fellowship (SELF), a program where engineering students and business students develop their leadership skills through visiting speakers and courses.
His favorite project is from Hack K-State 2019 where he and his friends created their startup, Applican.ai, a platform that matches technical students with internship opportunities based on cultural and technical fits. After working on it at a hackathon, his team decided to make it more than just a “project.” They are currently in the development stage and working towards a full launch in the spring of 2020.
