DeerHacks: 36-hours of innovation, connection and inspiration
DeerHacks is UTM’s annual hackathon that empowers students to showcase their creativity and build connections with like-minded peers.
DeerHacks is the University of Toronto Mississauga (UTM)’s largest annual hackathon that lasts over a 36-hour period where participants form teams throughout one weekend to build a piece of software according to a given topic.
In an interview with Henrik Zimmermann, the president of DeerHacks, and an interview with this year’s winners of the annual hackathon, The Medium has learned the story behind the evolvement of this event, as well as the winners’ experience.
What is DeerHacks?
As a classical hackathon, DeerHacks is not only an opportunity for students to showcase their coding skills, it is also a chance for students to showcase their innovativeness and refine their presentation skills.
This year’s topic—discovery—gave students a lot of room to let their imagination shine. “Students could build any kind of software, tool or website that they could associate with discovery within 36 hours,” said Zimmermann. For example, participants could build a habit tracker to help people recognize their habits or create projects focused on “discovering history” or “exploring the internet.”
“And at the end, they have to present their solution,” shared Zimmermann. “A very large part of the competition is how you can market your creation and explain your product market fit to the judges.”
At the end of the competition, students would come to a panel of experienced judges and industry veterans. Aside from receiving recognition for their hard work, winners would also receive prizes that are up to C$1,200.
The evolution of DeerHacks
With this year being the fourth iteration of DeerHacks, the event has developed into an exciting, professional and large-scale hackathon.
“Our first event was held fresh out of Covid-19, and it was the first time that people could host bigger events again on campus.” Zimmermann shared, “It was a way to invest and give back to the students.”
After the first year’s experimentation of hosting this event, DeerHacks evolved into a more professional, extensive event. “Some previous teams and organizers were able to get Major League Hacking (MLH) to support the hackathon.”
Zimmermann revealed that organizing this year’s hackathon is not without its challenges. With more financial restrictions and hosting regulations, the organizing team had to slightly scale down the hackathon. “Ultimately, we just want to keep the flame and events alive for people to connect.”
Nevertheless, it is the enthusiasm of participants that has fueled the organizers to push past all the obstacles and make this event as bright and valuable as ever. “It’s very rewarding when you see everything fall into place,” said Zimmermann. “It’s an amazing feeling to be able to get 180 people to show up. That makes me happy at the end of the day.”
“Be open to [connecting] with your fellow students and [exchanging] between teams. This event is very communal,” advised Zimmermann. “And you’re just here to have two days of fun. You’ll also have the opportunity to exchange with a lot of people, and upper years especially.” This event is about gaining experience, having a great time doing what you love, and connecting with like-minded peers.
Additionally, Zimmermann stated that organizers understand students’ heavy academic responsibilities, so it is not expected for participants to put in many hours in supporting the event.
DreamScape: This year’s winning idea
The idea that won this year was DreamScape, developed by Julius Henriques, Pratham Vijh, Tejovardhan Nepala, and Jahangir Minhas Minhas. Dreamscape is an application that helps you discover dreams and guides users towards self-discovery.
As you load DreamScape, you are introduced to a medieval loading page that asks you to enter the details of your dream, either by typing or speaking. After that, users will receive three different interpretations: mind door, spirit door, and action door.
Generated using Natural Language Processing and AI, these interpretations provide meaningful and personalized insights for users. According to an article by Devpost featuring DreamScape, the mind door provides you with a “psychological and emotional analysis of the dream,” the spiritual door provides you with a “symbolic or spiritual interpretation,” and the action door provides you with a “practical step or task related to the dream.”
The actual analysis of the dream was done using the Google Gemini AI model. The team particularly utilized prompt engineering to make sure the model gives brief, concise results that appropriately interpret the dream.
In an interview with The Medium, the team revealed how they came up with the idea of dreams. Nepala recounted that the inspiration came from a conversation with his mother: “I remembered my mum’s unusual habit of trying to decode her dreams, saying that a person’s dreams actually have a lot of information that can help understand one’s true self. I thought it fit perfectly into the theme of ‘Discover’ as ‘Self-Discovery.’”
From the idea of dreams, Vijh recalled that “at one point, ChatGPT suggested using doors as interactive choices, and that instantly clicked. From there, we ran with the medieval theme since it made the whole dream exploration feel more mysterious and fun.”
In order to complete the project in under 35 hours, Henriques explained that the team “split the work up in a way that favoured everyone’s expertise.” For example, Vijh was most experienced with frontend (the code that determines how the application looks like) so he was tasked with envisioning how DreamScape would work and designing it.
Nepala was the most familiar with integrating AI, so he handled the part of the code that took your dream, submitted it to Google Gemini, and outputted the answer. Meanwhile, Minhas took the role of connecting all the frontend and backend (the code for the functionality of the application) components together and making sure they functioned properly. While we couldn’t get a statement from Minhas, Henriques commented that his work was integral to the success of the project.
The biggest takeaway the team had from the event was the importance of collaboration. Nepal described that it was the power of teamwork that allowed “a group of four guys to create a beautiful product in 35 hours that would go towards winning first place in their first hackathon.”
The entire team wholeheartedly recommended that “everyone that’s even remotely interested in coding to sign up and do at least one hackathon in their life.” When we asked for advice for programmers who want to make the most out of their hackathons, Vijh said not to stress about “perfection” and instead focus on getting a working version first before making time to polish it later.” He also emphasized the importance of prioritization, advising, “Know what deserves your time and when to cut your losses and start anew.”
Features Editor (Volume 51); Associate Features Editor (Volume 50) — Madhav is a third year student completing a double major in mathematics and computer science, and a minor in professional writing. Everyone in UTM has a unique story that makes them special and deserves to be told. As the Features Editor, Madhav wants to narrate these types of stories with creative and descriptive writing. In his off-time, Madhav loves watching anime, reading manga or fantasy novels and listening to music.