EMU students launch 'Hack the Nest,' university's first student-led flagship hackathon

Have you ever heard of a hackathon? Think of it as a marathon or innovation where coders, designers, and problem solvers team up to build working tech prototypes from scratch in 24 hours. That sounds exhausting, gentlemen. Eastern Michigan University is hosting its very first student-led competition. Joining us this morning are two of the minds behind it. We've got computer science major and founder Chanute, along with Vice President Melvin. Guys, welcome. You're welcome. So you hear hack. hackathon with computer programming you think that you are trying to hack into something that is not necessarily the case. Yeah, that's a common misconception. Everyone thinks a hackathon is hacking, but this Hack the Nest is happening on November 14th and 15th and it's where people, students will get together to build solutions to solve real-world problems. Okay, so real-world problems in different fields. Melvin, you were telling me, so take my field, take our field, media, reporting. What would happen? So let's say that you guys find, let's say there's someone from media and digital relations, digital media, and then there's another student from computer science, and then there's another student from engineering. And let's say all three of them start looking for problems in those respective industries. And they see something that, oh, you know what, this is something that most reporters face on a daily basis. This is something that the media team faces on a daily basis. So let's create a solution for this. So it can be, and that's just an example, right? It can be any industry that you can think of. It can be AI, it can be engineering, it can be medicine. So there are possibilities out there. And this event at Eastern, this is a student-run thing. A lot of times you've got bigger organizations, and I know you guys do have sponsors and things like that, but why was it important for the students to set this whole thing up? It's, it has always been hackathons are always student run events and students themselves take part in hackathons. So they see the entire aspect of things. So therefore we thought we should just do it at Eastern because we weren't having this level of a flagship hackathon at Eastern before. And Chinut, how many, how many different states and different people in the states are represented here? Because this is not just like an Ypsilanti based event. This is national. Yeah, so we just checked the stats yesterday, and we have people from 18 different states registered for the hackathon, and also people from Canada coming to Ypsilanti for Hack the Nest. That's incredible. Melvin, so what is made during this 24-hour period? Is it just a one-time, you make it, you code it, and then you delete it, and it's gone? Or do you actually then take Take this idea and build upon it. That's an excellent question. This happens a lot. We have a lot of friends, a lot of people from different universities and different hackathons that have started projects in hackathons and they've carried out to become minimum viable products which have carried out to become startups, right? This happens all the time. In fact, we built something quite recently and we're looking at turning it into a startup. So that's never the case where you build something, you just delete it. You can literally take it, keep it in your resume forever as something that you did, which is wonderful. And also, it's something that can go way beyond the scope of the hackathon. So, in a way, the event is kind of like a high-pressure incubator. Yeah, actually, that's a perfect way of thinking. Great. Well, there we go. That's it. No, no. So, can people, if they're watching at home and they want to get involved, are they able to do so? Yeah, I would say check out hackthenest.tech, and that's our website. All right. There you can check out all our sponsors, partners, and what we're doing, and you can register as well. Very good. And is there an age limit, do you have to be a college student? We have from high school to undergrad to master's to even Ph.D. students. Yep. The whole pipeline. All right. Guys, thank you so much for being here. This is a very interesting, very cool thing. Thank you so much. It's such a pleasure. Thank you. You saw the information right there. You see the website on the bottom of your screen, you can take a look at that, and we will be right back after this.