With AthenaHacks 2023 coming up this weekend, our Logistics Lead, Lavanya Sharma, shares her tips on getting the most out of AthenaHacks and preparing for a hackathon.

Lavanya also works as Coach at Major League Hacking (MLH), a hackathon-focused organization that partners with us annually, so she has attended her fair share of hackathons and has plenty of advice to share.

What are a few things that first-time hackers should bring?

1. Curiosity and an open mind!
2. From personal experience, it is a lot less daunting if you come with a couple of friends you can potentially team up with.

For your first hackathon, you don’t quite know what to expect — if you have a friend, the new experience is something you can go through together as an exciting challenge. This is more enjoyable than going in blind and being intimidated due to the large number of experienced people at the event: It’s kind of like a strength in numbers. Plus, if you meet other beginners, invite them to your team!

3. Chargers!

This one is pretty obvious, but you don’t want to be someone who doesn’t have their charger or wastes precious time looking for their cable when they could be working on the project instead. Portable chargers are also a good option, especially when outlets might be limited.

What kind of goals should people set?

For first-time hackers, you should try as many things as possible! Go to all the workshops, and talk to all the fantastic company representatives. As a hacker, you have nothing to lose, so take the chance to be as creative as possible!

Center your experience not on competing but on learning, growing, and networking. Don’t feel intimidated by more experienced hackers — everyone has to start from somewhere, and today is where you’re starting your hackathon journey!

General advice for any returning hacker is to encourage more first-time hackers. It’s pretty easy to identify them since they end up looking kind of lost or shy and are often afraid to ask questions. Try to be there as a friendly face or a role model, and encourage people to ask for help or even make mistakes. It’s really easy to get caught up in the competitive aspect of the hackathon, but it’s a safe environment for learning, especially at AthenaHacks.

What kind of projects should people work on?

Try out something new or something you’ve been excited about recently. There’s nothing to lose at a hackathon! You can use a tech stack you already enjoy working with and want to gain more experience in, or use an entirely new tech stack you’ve never heard of before and learn how it works! Both are equally great as long as you’re passionate about the project you’re building.

How do I form teams? Do I try to work with people who are more experienced? What if I come alone but want to work with a team?

Regardless of skill level or technical experience, don’t be afraid to explore the unknown. It can be super fun when none of your team members know what they’re doing and spitball random project ideas together. It’s alright to trial-and-error your way through your first hackathon project. Some of our past hackers made projects with languages they learned during the hackathon and won prizes!

Also, if you come alone and don’t have a team, that’s completely okay! Fellow hackers are also there to learn new things and meet new people, so don’t be afraid to go up to people and say, “Hey, I loved speaking with you at the Web Development workshop. I’d love to work together!” Most people will be supportive and point you in the right direction!

AthenaHacks also provides a dedicated time for team formation the night before over Zoom and before the opening ceremony on Saturday! There will be plenty of opportunities to find your teammates before hacking starts.

How does AthenaHacks differ from other hackathons?

AthenaHacks is Southern California’s first women-centric hackathon (trans and non-binary inclusive), and we welcome all students with marginalized gender identities. As a result, we are wholly focused on creating an inclusive environment rather than a competitive one.

Ask questions, make mistakes, and don’t feel embarrassed if you don’t know something. We genuinely believe that there’s no such thing as a dumb question.

Any tips on pitching our project during judging?

During the project pitch, focus equally on the project’s impact, as well as the nitty-gritty technical details. Both are extremely important, and the why and the how must go hand-in-hand.

Hopefully, this was a helpful guide for anyone attending AthenaHacks 2023! The team and our sponsors are offering workshops throughout the hackathon. If you don’t have any technical experience, these workshops will be super valuable resources to make you feel more prepared whilst building your project.

Follow us on Instagram @athena_hacks to get the most up-to-date info on all things AthenaHacks. We will be announcing our workshops, meal plans, etc. on there so keep an eye out!

Should you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us at athena_hacks@gmail.com or visit our website athenahacks.com to read our FAQ and reference our hackathon schedule.

The AthenaHacks team is looking forward to seeing you all soon, happy hacking!

Victoria Lawton is a junior studying Biomedical Engineering with an electrical emphasis and a minor in Connected Devices and Making. She is also a co-founder and chief operating officer at ZenaTech Inc.

She was part of a winning team — MaternaMonitor — at AthenaHacks 2022, with her teammates Tanya Aggarwal, Rachel Brockman, and Karen Chu. Her team created a smartwatch with the goal of making healthcare accessible for all mothers. The watch recorded the user’s vitals to calculate heart rate variability, which could be shared with their primary care physician and aid in detecting preeclampsia early. It could also detect emergency falls and had functions to connect users with emergency contacts and healthcare services that they need.

What made you sign up for AthenaHacks?
I participated in a wearable technology competition before AthenaHacks and really enjoyed it, so I wanted to try my hand at a true hackathon and see how that would go. It was honestly a little daunting at first because I thought hackathons were exclusively for Computer Science majors but I quickly realized I could build any type of project I wanted, which was really cool.

How did you find your teammates?
I went into AthenaHacks as a team of three, with one of my teammates being a colleague from a startup I worked on and the other from my BME class. Our fourth teammate reached out at the beginning of the hackathon and joined the team on the day of.

How did you and your team come up with the idea for AthenaHacks?
All of us were interested in medical technology, particularly in wearable technology, with most of our team made up of biomedical engineering majors. We started off by spitballing ideas, then downscaling them to make the project feasible within the 24-hour timeframe.

What was your team’s process like during the hackathon?
The key to success is splitting the project into different sections and assigning them to each team member based on their strengths. We split MaternaMonitor into four sections: smartwatch prototype with SolidWorks, data analysis with MATLAB, website development, and marketing.

This was the best strategy because our team ran into a brick wall trying to get the smartwatch sensor’s data to connect with Twilio. The Bluetooth connection wasn’t working and we ended up having to physically plug in the sensor and write a script to link the data. This would not have been possible without my teammate Rachel’s expertise in the area.

We also ran into some smaller bugs with our C++ code, but the AthenaHacks mentors were extremely helpful in helping us debug these errors and get our project up and running.

What tips do you have for people attending a hackathon?
My biggest tip would be to spend enough time figuring out what type of project you want to work on. The scope should be reasonable and within the capabilities of your team members. It’s also essential to find good team members that you mesh well with and can rely on. A hackathon is a high-stress environment due to the time crunch in developing an entire project from scratch, so it’s crucial that all the personalities on your team work well together.

How can someone with less/ no coding experience contribute to their team?
They can carry more of the discussion with project ideation and offer creative solutions to any problems that arise. It’s not crucial to have coding experience, it is helpful for debugging and resolving syntax errors, but it definitely isn’t a deal breaker. I suggest that people with less coding experience team up with someone more experienced to learn from them.

For example, my team had a business student who didn’t have any coding experience but she was still a key player in making the project a success. She was able to offer a new perspective from a non-engineering lens, especially when we were talking through our thought process, she was able to spot logical inconsistencies that we glossed over.

Learn more about MaternaMonitor here

–

Interested in participating as a hacker in the next AthenaHacks?
AthenaHacks 2023 is taking place on February 25–26, 2023 in a hybrid format! We are open to all 18+ students with a marginalized gender identity (women, non-binary, gender-fluid, etc.)

Hacker applications are open NOW on our website athenahacks.com and close on January 25, 2023 at 11:59 PM PST. The first 200 applicants will receive an exclusive sticker!

Feel free to send any enquiries to our email athenahacks@gmail.com and follow us on Instagram @athena_hacks to stay updated on all things AthenaHacks :)

AthenaHacks 2021 is officially wrapped up (well, almost official — we’re still getting you your swag :) )! Although this was our first-ever virtual hackathon, everyone’s enthusiasm and excitement made this event better than ever. Thank you to every hacker, mentor, sponsor, and judge!

So you can get the big picture of the event, here’s a breakdown of what you might have missed while you were busy doing amazing work:

By the Numbers

Teams: 127

Hackers: 300+

Mentors: 27

Schools represented:

Top 3 Schools: USC, Simon Fraser University, University of Waterloo

Project submissions: 79 (representing 281 hackers)

Keynote

We were thrilled to welcome Sarvenaz Myslicki as this year’s keynote speaker! She shared a story about overcoming doubts about her abilities and background in her first-ever computer science class in college. Although new situations (from hackathons to jobs) can be intimidating, the best way to tackle it is to jump in and get to work, ready to learn from your mistakes.

Having Fun While Hacking

You didn’t think we were just building the next big thing all weekend, did you?

Hackers were inspired by Sarvenaz’s encouraging message of perseverance, self-belief, and beating imposter syndrome:

There was a lot happening throughout the day, too; take a look at some workshop highlights! We had a total of 8 workshops, all with inspiring advice and hard-to-find tips for the tech industry. Take a look below at pictures from events with Microsoft, Zynga, and Repl.it:

Plus, a special shout-out to this event’s mentors; with your generosity, more and more hackers felt encouraged and able to complete their project submissions. There were plenty of hackers thanking you on- and off-line too!

Winners

Congratulations to the projects that really caught judges’ eyes! Way to go!

Iago — Best Overall, Best Hardware Hack Sponsored by Digi-Key — MLH

Penny’s Programming Adventure — Athena’s Favorite

EyeScream — Best Beginner Hack

Tastee — Pinnacle Hack Winner at AthenaHacks

rythMind — Best Use of Azure for Social Good Sponsored by Microsoft

Astoria and the Mysterious Realm — Best Entertainment Hack Sponsored by Disney

CosmoCare — Best Mobile Hack Sponsored by Zynga

PeerEnergy — Best Hack In Finance Sponsored by Bloomberg

V Tour — Best AR/VR Application Using the echoAR Platform, Sponsored by echoAR

Beyond the Horizon Line — Best Domain Registered with Domain.com — MLH

FEM: Future Emerging Medicine — Best Use of Google Cloud — MLH

Training Liasion — Best Hardware Hack Sponsored by Digi-Key — MLH

Women Empowering Stock Portfolio — Best Use of CockroachDB — MLH

And finally . . .

This isn’t good-bye; we’ll see you again in 2022! Have fun changing the world one line of code at the time until then. ❤

So, you’ve asked around for advice on how to become a better developer; that’s great! You’ve also probably been told that personal projects are a great way to learn new technologies and add to your portfolio. Also great — but how do you get started on something that can feel ambiguous and too open-ended? And once you get started, how do you keep going long enough to finish?

These are all great questions! Here are some pieces of actionable advice from AthenaHacks organizers looking to help you out:

a) Know your why — and then write it down on a Post-It note and tape it to your laptop. Popular advice for people starting on an ambitious new project is “know your why and it’ll be easy!” And sometimes, it really is that simple. But other times, you’ll say to yourself, “Well, my ‘why’ is easy, I just want to get better at this thing,” and scroll to the next item on the advice list. So let’s make things concrete this time and put it writing somewhere where you’ll always see it. Examples might be “I want to be prepared to use this piece of software at my summer internship”, “I want to be able to contribute more code to my next group project for class”, “I want to have a specific experience to talk about in an interview”, etc. Besides, knowing that there is a future where you’re more prepared, knowledgeable, and enthusiastic about technology than you are today can be a big motivator!

b) Know your scope — and it might need to be smaller than you’re thinking right now. “A short-medium completion time is something between a weekend and two months” is an idea suggested by writer Filipe Silva in this Medium article , and it’s a concrete way to know if your project idea is manageable. Because the goal here is to start and finish your side project, make sure that what you decide to do can be finished in the foreseeable future.

Don’t forget that scope includes your current abilities as well as your time.

The above graph was created by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the researcher who coined the concept of “flow”; it’s a state of activity between something being so easy that you’re bored or so hard that you’re stressed out. To make sure you have the motivation to keep tinkering, keep it interesting and accomplishable by challenging yourself to program small but novel pieces of software.

c) Know what work you’ve already put in up to this point — and be prepared to have a Google Doc handy for this one! In other words: document everything you do for the side project, for two reasons.

1. When you first get started on a project, there’ll be a lot of little tasks, from reading documentation to watching video tutorials to just figuring out which resources or tech stacks you’ll want to use. This research phase is valuable but not tangible. To avoid looking back at your day and thinking “where did all my time go?!”, document where that time went. You’ll feel like you made a lot of progress today, because you did.
2. When you’ve gotten to the middle of the project, a lot can go wrong that throws off your progress. You might forget why you chose to use a certain API or which version of Python you’re running or why you decided to go for a NoSQL database over SQL. Or a package you imported is deprecated and everything crashes. Is this stressful, and are you going to spend time hunting for the answers to these issues instead of working on a fun new feature? Probably, yes. But if you have a record of the decisions you made weeks ago and which resources helped you in the past, then you’ll get unstuck a lot faster. No more searching for that one helpful Stack Overflow post from four years ago!

So, are you ready to get excited about something new? Let us know with a clap! And as always — happy hacking!

At my first hackathon, I spent the entire first four hours trying to come up with a project idea with my team — four hours! That can feel like years in the hackathon time scale. To help you make the most of your time if you’ve never come up with a hackathon project idea before, we outline below strategies for finding an idea and strategies for fleshing out the idea.

Finding an Idea

1. Get meta and search the web for “hackathon project ideas”. Weird tip, but there’s plenty of people who have asked this question on forums, posted on social media, or written listicles about this exact dilemma. I wish I had thought of this at my first hackathon! A lot of the projects listed might seem wildly out of reach or not applicable to the hackathon, but that’s okay; just use them as inspiration.
2. Use the prize categories. These can range anywhere from “Best Mobile Hack” to “Best Use of AWS” to “Best Digital Art”. Focusing on the medium, rather than the problem, can be an approach that inspires a new idea. If you narrow your range of options from “any project involving technology” to “any project involving the Google Maps API”, you suddenly have an easier time thinking of projects that fit the description.
3. Talk to company representatives. This is a tip I received from an experienced older student when I was at my second-ever hackathon. Companies from Lyft to MongoDB will have developer advocates (whose job is to help students at hackathons!) who can help you think of ways to integrate their tech into a project. You can ask, “What was [this API] built for?”, or “How have you seen [this API] used?”, or even “What’s a way you’ve never seen [this API] used?”
4. Look to solve niche, tiny problems that contribute to a larger problem. It’s unlikely you’ll be able to completely reduce food waste in your home country in one weekend, but you could build an application that alerts you about your food’s expiration date as a way to reduce food waste in the short-term.

Scoping the Idea

If you’re new to the concept of scoping a project, it just means that you choose which features you have to build, which ones would be nice to build, and which ones you should scrap for now. Example: if you were building a car, you need four wheels, although it would be really nice to have a GPS system. If you want to be done with the car any time this year, maybe skip trying to give it birds’ wings.

That being said, there are two not-mutually-exclusive approaches (if not more!) to scoping your idea out:

1. Make it wildly big. Hackathon judges don’t always check to see if you caught every tiny bug or built something that can handle millions of users. So if you want to attempt to build something ambitious and challenging, focus on bringing that to life. You only have so much time, after all!
2. Or go deep. Maybe your idea isn’t about pushing the bounds of technology as we know it, but you do want to spend as much time making it as robust as it can be. You can focus on learning how to make it scalable, how to secure it from cyberattacks, how to integrate design principles to enhance the user’s experience, or how to write clear and usable documentation. These are also great assets to mention in your demo at the end of the hackathon.

Even if project ideation feels a little rough at first, you’ll learn a little more about what makes a good idea over time. So jump in and get started!

Anything else?

Always feel free to come to our organizers with questions or suggestions for improvement at athenahacks@gmail.com or on Instagram @athena_hacks. And follow event updates on our Facebook event page!

So you’re all set; you’ve found a hackathon you’re interested in (like AthenaHacks, for example) and are ready to apply. The only thing missing is your dream team.

Not for long! Below, we outline ways to prepare your team ahead of time and, if that doesn’t work out, ways to form a team at the hackathon itself.

Preparation Before Applications to the Hackathon are Due

1. Bug your friends. They’re people you’ve already seen work on projects, so the familiarity is in your favor. If they have experience with technology or computing already, great! If they don’t, great! All a hackathon team needs are people who are willing to learn about technology and engineering.
2. Search your wider social circle. If you’re in any clubs, organizations, or class group projects, mention the hackathon to them and see if anyone is interested in attending with you. This can be a great bonding experience to have with people you might not know as well yet, too.

Pro tip: some hackathons (including AthenaHacks) have referral programs that will reward you for referring people to the hackathon. Definitely make the most of that if you can!

Making a Team on the Fly

At both virtual and in-person hackathons, there are two great ways to find team members:

1. The team formation event. This is a physical room or meeting link where all the hackers who are looking to form a team will meet.
2. The #general Slack/Discord channel. People are always sending messages about forming teams in these channels. Sometimes people say they’re looking to join a team and other times a half-formed team will put out a call for new members.

Either way, be ready ahead of time by knowing what you’re interested in learning or working on (even if it’s “anything”) and what you can contribute.

If you have experience, your pitch for yourself might look like this:

Hi! I’m Aubrey the Owl, and I’m interested in working on a health-related web app this weekend. My experience has been in Java and C++, and I like working on front-end design too.

If you don’t have experience, your pitch can look like this:

Hi! I’m Tammy Trojan, and I’m interested in learning more about web applications this weekend. While I haven’t yet been to a hackathon before, I’m always looking to learn about different languages, and would be happy to contribute to a team however I can.

When in-person hackathons are feasible again, spontaneous and organic team formation is also possible; find people in line for a meal, sitting next to you at the opening ceremony, or getting their swag at the registration table.

But until then, we’ll make the most of Zoom University hackathons. Happy hacking!

Anything else?

Always feel free to come to our organizers with questions or suggestions for improvement at athenahacks@gmail.com or on Instagram @athena_hacks. And follow event updates on our Facebook event page!

Imagine this: you log on to your computer and see hundreds of people greeting each other in a group chat. The person you’ve always wanted to see speak at an event is being livestreamed right in front of you! You’re getting into fun conversations on Slack and deciding which crazy software idea you want bring to life in one weekend. And you never even have to get up off a chair to make this happen.

What are you up to? A virtual hackathon opening ceremony!

While the world might have changed substantially in the last year, hackathon organizers — especially those at AthenaHacks — are doing everything they can to make sure that students can attend memorable, fun-filled events in a safe way. If you’re a first-timer at a hackathon, read on to find out what a virtual hackathon looks like, what you can be excited to get out of it, what to do if you’re a beginner programmer, and what we look for in AthenaHacks hacker applications.

The Walkthrough for a First-Timer

An in-person hackathon would look like this: after a trip via bus/car/plane from your school to the host school, you’ll line up at a registration table where you can receive swag and a warm welcome from the organizers! Then, you’ll follow signs from the registration table to the location for the opening ceremony, where you’ll watch an inspiring keynote speaker and representatives from companies talk about their software product or internship program.

Then, for the next 24–48 hours, you’ll get your team together, plan and start coding a project (as small or wild as you want it to be!), attend technical and professional workshops you’re interested in, stack cups competitively, eat all the free meals and snacks, take a nap, meet other students, and get ready to demonstrate what you’ve built at the end of the time. Not necessarily in that order every time, but you get the gist.

A virtual hackathon contains all the same elements, just presented differently.

• You’ll be on platforms like Google Meet, Teams, or Zoom to meet up with team members or attend a presentation.
• You’ll ask mentors for help in a Slack or Discord channel.
• You’ll have a dedicated space to socialize and meet other hackers in “general”, “fun”, or “random” channels.
• You’ll receive a fun package in the mail with all of your hackathon swag!

What You’ll Get Out of the Hackathon

1. Technology skills. In one weekend, you could be exposed to a range of skills and new challenges: how to use version control, how to use a new API, how to set up a database, how to search through documentation to fix an obscure bug, or how to teach yourself a whole new programming language. If you’ve ever felt unsure about some of tech’s vocabulary (does anyone really know what the cloud is?), this is your chance to dive in headfirst and get some expert help along the way!
2. Entrepreneurial experience. People often say that start-up founders wear a lot of hats, but they never say that the same can be said of hackathon attendees! To make your project successful, you’ll find yourself interviewing fellow students like a customer researcher, brainstorming features like a product manager, browsing color palettes like a designer, or giving a charming elevator pitch like a founder.
3. New friends! Through organizer or MLH-planned events, breakout rooms with a mentor, or the team you’re working with, you’ll come across people from different backgrounds but the same interest in building new tech. You could meet your future best friend or cofounders at a hackathon!

But what if I’ve never coded before?

No problem; most student-run hackathons, and AthenaHacks in particular, pride themselves on being beginner-friendly and may even have a prize for the best beginner’s project. The following resources will be available:

• Slack or Discord channels with student mentors or volunteers with tech experience
• Company representatives who can answer technical questions related to their software product
• Workshops on everything from building your first website to getting the hang of machine learning
• Hackathon organizers who can point you towards the resources that are right for you

Fun fact: many of AthenaHacks’ organizers themselves figured out how to build software at their first hackathon!

How AthenaHacks Chooses Applicants

Well, what was your SAT score?

. . . just kidding! AthenaHacks organizers really only look for two things:

• You identify as a woman, femme, or non-binary
• Your application statement shows that you’re passionate about technology and AthenaHacks’ mission to close the gender gap in hackathon attendance!

Just in case it wasn’t clear before: you do not need to have coding experience to be accepted. We accept and celebrate all students who are excited to learn about technology.

So — get excited to have fun at a virtual hackathon! And happy hacking!

Anything else?

Always feel free to come to our organizers with questions or suggestions for improvement at athenahacks@gmail.com or on Instagram @athena_hacks. And follow event updates on our Facebook event page!

AthenaHacks returned on April 6–7 for another successful hackathon this year full of Yerba Mates, RawRev bars, midnight boba, cup stacking, and motivated female hackers! With over 400 attendees from universities all over California, Missouri, and even Indiana, USC’s Tutor Center Ballroom lit up with laptop screens and caffeinated college students to create impactful projects in under 24 hours.

We kicked off the weekend with our opening ceremony which included speakers from Microsoft, MLH, Neudesic, and our Keynote speaker — Morgan Mercer. Allison from Microsoft proclaimed the importance of being our most authentic self because standing out is not a bad thing. Neudesic’s Rachel Phillips encouraged us to push our limits and go outside of our comfort zone. Andrea from MLH reminded us of our value and put on an epic game of cup stacking later that night! Keynote speaker, Ms. Morgan Mercer motivated us to live a life worth writing about and that every no is one step closer to a yes.

Hacking began promptly after the ceremony and passion undoubtedly filled the room giving everyone the drive to keep going. Thank you to our sponsors Google, Activision, Zynga, Facebook, Microsoft, Lyft, and Raytheon for putting on workshops for our hackers. Some of our favorites included, Intro to iOS, Life at Lyft, and the Cybersecurity Panel.

Two brains are better than one, shoutout to our mentors and volunteers for providing a helping hand to our hardworking hackers and organizers! A happy hacker is fueled with good food and drinks, which could not have been possible without our food sponsors and caterers. Midnight boba from the boba truck was another hit this year (seeing you girls run after hearing the word boba was a real life hunger games) and so were the Yerba Mates, after all what’s a hackathon without an overload on caffeine and sugar?

And lastly, a huge congratulations to our winners — HER2Her, Translation Nation, Recycling Rewards, and Autism Care (check out a list of all the winners and the 74 submissions here)!

We were all truly inspired by your projects and we hope to see them in the app store one day :) Can’t wait to see all of your beautiful faces back in sunny Southern California next year! Fight on!

For more pictures

And for our video made by Lindsay Huang ’22

Keynote Speaker

Our keynote speaker this year is Morgan Mercer—founder of Vantage Point, an immersive enterprise training company. Read more about her HERE.

Workshops

Technical Workshops

• Intro to Web withRuby on Rails (Invoca)
• How to Hack in the Cloud (Microsoft)
• Intro to Unity (Zynga)
• Intro to Android (Facebook)
• Intro to iOS (Facebook)
• Intro to AI/ML (Neudesic)
• Angular JS Workshop (Google)
• Building a Web API (Honey)

Professional Workshops and Panels

• Cybersecurity Panel (Raytheon)
• Interview Tips (Bloomberg)
• Resume Review (Zynga)
• Life at Lyft

Prizes

We have over 19 PRIZES (totaling over $2k in value)! View them on our Devpost Page.

Schedule

Transportation

You can find info about Lyft codes, buses, and parking HERE.

Food

Check out some of our food sponsors at https://www.athenahacks.com/. Also follow us on Instagram to look at food updates closer to the event.

Neudesic is a technology partner for business innovation. They provide technology, services, and software products to organizations worldwide. They offer ESB integration platform and enterprise social software. Their HQ is in Irvine, California. They will be at AthenaHacks in person!

Microsoft is a multinational technology company that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports and sells computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers and related services. Its HQ is in Redmond, Washington. They will be at AthenaHacks in person!

Zynga is a social game developer! They focus mostly on mobile gaming and are best known for their game, FarmVille on Facebook. Words with Friends is another very popular game they created, with about 57 million games being played at any moment. Their HQ is in San Francisco (and you have the chance of visiting it at AthenaHacks!). They will be at AthenaHacks in person!

Google is a multinational tech company that specializes in Internet related services and products. They specialize in online advertising technologies, search engines, cloud computing, software and hardware. Some of their products are Google Search, Google Drive, Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Chrome, Google Maps, Waze. They also lead the development of the Android mobile operating system. They will be present at AthenaHacks!

Raytheon is a major US defense contractor. They provide state of the art electronics, mission systems integration and other capabilities in the area of sensing, effects, and command, control, communications and intelligence systems. They will be present at AthenaHacks!

Honey is a browser extension that automatically finds and applies coupon codes at checkout with a single click. There is also a way to notify users of price drops and price history for selected items! They are headquartered in Los Angeles, CA and will be present at AthenaHacks!

Activision is a video game creator based in Santa Monica. They are one of the largest third party video gam publishers in the world and were the top publisher in 2016 for the United States. They will be present at AthenaHacks!

Bloomberg is a privately held financial, software, data, and media company. They’re headquartered in NYC and will be present at AthenaHacks!

Facebook is an online social media and social networking service. They also own Instagram, Whatsapp, and Oculus! They are headquarter in Menlo Park, CA and they will be present at AthenaHacks!

Invoca is a developer of a cloud-based platform linked to inbound-call marketing services. They offer solutions for consumer marketers, B2B marketers, search marketers, agencies and perform marketers. They will be present at AthenaHacks!

Chevron develops and manages technology to help find and produce new oil and gas reserves, enhance recovery in existing fields, and optimize productivity of downstream assets. They also identify and develop emerging technology to have the potential to transform energy production and use.

Lyft is an on-demand transportation company that primarily works on ride hailing services. They’ve launched in approximately 300 US cities and provide over 1 million rides a day. They’re headquartered in San Francisco and they will be present at AthenaHacks!

Northrop Grumman works to secure the world — from under the sea to the land, to the air and into outer space. They work in engineering, manufacturing, cybersecurity, business management, information technology, and project management. They will be present at AthenaHacks!