 This past weekend, the world's largest hackathon took place right across the bay in San Francisco. I'm Parker Lishroy with CalTV News, and to truly understand the experience of this year's annual CalHacks hackathon, CalTV decided to send a team to compete against thousands of other Bay Area hackers. With CalHacks claiming that all levels of experience can compete at the event, we wanted to see how a team of almost all amateurs would fare. But more importantly, we wanted to get to the bottom of why thousands gathered for a weekend of non-stop debugging, caffeine drinking, and problem-solving. Although hacking conjures the idea of someone writing malicious code to break into some system, to hack at the hackathon means to build something, usually using existing frameworks and solutions to tackle some unsolved problem. But beyond the competition, there were workshops hosted throughout the day that helped beginners start their projects, as well as social events like cup stacking, Smash Bros., a 1am wash party of Shrek 2, and a Rubik's Cube contest that our teammates smile and found great success in. I think you won. But to make this all happen, top companies sponsor the event and even give away massive prizes, ranging from an iPad mini to a $10,000 grant. So companies want to be blown away by our solutions. Looking forward to really see what ideas people are bringing up and how passionately they are building on that. At the end of the day, hackathon is all about the passion, and ideas, so very keen to look forward and see what comes out. We knew our idea had to be good if we wanted a shot at winning, so we sat down and brainstormed until we landed on an idea that would streamline the video editing process. Our app would simply take in a video in a key phrase, and it would return a clip of the video that includes that key word or phrase. And safe to say, it had great reviews. That's so good! You're being humble as f***, this is like a million dollar idea. This is actually amazing. One of the best things I've seen is the soccer ball. Thank you. Excellent. We didn't pay this guy. But we asked others what they were working on to see how it squared up to our project. Like, our project in specific is more of like a social good product, so we're trying to create like a charging, an autonomous charging vehicle for unhoused individuals. And I feel like there's not a lot of other places where you just be able to like make something that you want to make without having to like appease anyone per se. I really like my girlfriend, and my idea is that I'm going to make a focus app. Like it helps me focus. Yeah. So what it does, it'll use the webcam to track my eyes. And when I'm looking at my screen as a reward, it'll flash a picture of my girlfriend every minute. And it'll kind of like condition me into keeping my eyes on the screen instead of like looking at my phone or... Yeah, so I'm building a virtual reality marketplace for NFTs on Solana, which basically is a way for people to trade digital assets that are Reddit and 3D and a virtual environment. Dude, this is unbelievable. That's what I was looking at. And so to challenge these projects, we needed to start strong. And luckily we did, as Abhi and I started to get some basic functionality down. So a little update. We have our video transcription software. Next, the next step is just to get our editing done. So use the timestamps of these words to help edit our videos. OK, next step. But completing the next step is never as easy as it seems. And as the night went on, progress got slower. And whenever it was next to implement, we were going to have to learn on the fly. Learning. OK, folks. That's number one here. But Adi and I were determined to deliver something to the judges the next day. So we did what any good coder would do. And that's drink a lot of energy drinks to stay up all night. But running into problems is an essential part of the hackathon experience. And so we were certainly not alone in our struggles. Is there any like pitfalls you've hit? Any, you know, any unexpected things that have happened? Constantly, because that is coding. I think progress is OK. Biggest hiccup is probably the Wi-Fi thing. That was really tough, especially because like everything needs even my like CAD software for designing the print requires Wi-Fi. So while we were waiting for that, it was pretty hard to get things done. We've tried probably four or five different ideas at this point. All of those sponsors provide a lot of starter code. The problem is now it's 2 a.m. And they're not around to help you use it when you run into problems. All of this seems like frustrating late night work, and it is. So why does it attract so many participants? You can watch like the Warren Miller ski movies, wherever and see the people throwing themselves off like gigantic mountains. That's nothing that the adrenaline rush of that. That's nothing like the people who are base jumping. That's nothing. I tell you what the most prime adrenaline rush is at 3 a.m. When you finally get a bug worked out. Yeah, I mean, it's it's it's like nothing you can get in the excansion or anything like that. Hackathons are the one excuse to have like the worst health habits, like procrastinating on a project till you have only 24 hours to do it. Stay up the whole night, drink energy drinks at 3 a.m. Like nowhere else is that going to be like, good job. That's right what you should do other than like the hackathon. I originally joined more of like as a social thing. And it was I did my first hackathon like right when COVID hit and it was more of like, oh, I have nothing better to do. I might as well like meet some people and try to learn something. And then I made like some of my closest friends through it. So I've definitely continued doing it because of that. And so while some grind it through the night, others use this as an opportunity to be with friends and meet new people. How's your guys's idea going? We just we just dropped it. What are you doing here? You're just continuing? I mean, we gave up like. We are here because we wanted to get out of Berkeley for a night and hang out for a couple of hours in the place. Yeah, we were going to go to Denny's in a couple of hours. Oh, that is actually a great idea. It's all that late last night and since there was so much fun to be had, sleep was not a top priority for most people. Yeah, it's been like four hours since I saw you guys last. Any updates? We've learned a lot about ourselves and each other. We think it's true. We think it's true. Although it felt like two years, we were really only at the hackathon for two days. But we were pleasantly surprised with the event and ourselves. It's true that all levels can compete. And although Addy and Akil had no programming experience, they were able to use their marketing abilities to make a great pitch for our product. So here's our 10-page. Running my money. Although it wasn't enough to bring home the $10,000 prize, we definitely didn't feel like we left empty handed. We left with the confidence in our ability to make something from scratch in just a day. And that's what the hackathon is really about. I'm Parker Lishway, Cal TV News.