Throughout my Sophomore year, I was looking for a hackathon I could fit into my Carleton schedule. When I couldn’t find one, I reached out to the CS department to see if they’d be interested in hosting one – almost a year later, I couldn’t be prouder of what it became.
The Carleton GitTogether is our attempt to make hackathons accessible and fun! We wanted to give a platform for people to find joy in coding through making something meaningful to them – not just something that would look good on a LinkedIn post. Of the 26 participants of our inaugural event, most of them had never participated in a hackathon before. We played games, ate good food, and coded in a low-stakes, fun environment.
This was my first time organizing an event like this, and there was definitely a lot of work involved, but our team of: Aiden Johnson, Emma Yao, Warren Kozak, Daya Tucker, Jesse Lindholm, Zoe Morton and the support from the Carleton CS department definitely made this all possible. I can’t wait to do this again next year!
Results:
- First place: Dinobytes; Award: JBL Speakers
- Project: DinoLinks – One byte closer to everyone – visualize connections between Carleton students (3d graph)
- Second place: Coders by Knight; Award: $50 Target gift cards
- Project: Carleton Defenders – Carleton Defenders is a game where you defend campus from a formidable opponent. Our defenders? None other than beloved professors!
- Third place: Kakashi; Award: Power banks
- Project: Carlender – A Google Chrome extension to automatically make a calendar of your classes
- STFF award (funniest project): Maize Blue Hats; Penguin jellycat bag charms
- Project: BitMiner – A website designed to help you strike it big!
- https://github.com/Mattheus-Stearns/GitTogether26





