During the days leading up to Northeastern men’s hockey repeat Beanpot victory at TD Garden, dozens of students huddled together a few miles away to gear up for their own competition of a different sort.

HackBeanpot 2019 brought together 150 participants from local universities during February 8-10 at Catalant Technologies in Boston’s Seaport district with the goal of developing usable products. As an independent non-profit organization, HackBeanpot relies on student volunteers who work year-round to plan the annual hackathon.

“The main reason we put on the event is to give students a space to learn and use their skill sets to build something they’re excited about,” says HackBeanpot president Raquel Levy (BS, Computer Science and Design ‘21).

Fun and accessible to everyone—from experienced computer science students to beginners who have never written a line of code—HackBeanpot fosters learning and creativity. It is also a way for Northeastern students to meet peers from other schools in the greater Boston area.

“Be it different majors, different schools, different years of study, we provide an environment that allows for that sort of collaboration,” remarks Noah Appleby (BS, Computer Science and Design ‘20), another member of the organizing team.

HackBeanpot 2019 saw an increase in the number of projects aiming to improve social good, from summarizing trending news stories to enhancing the Instagram experience for visually impaired users.

One noteworthy project by a group of Northeastern students lets Facebook users more easily understand the data the social media platform has on them. The “Facebook Audit” team used front-end development and data analysis techniques that were all new to them in order to build summaries and visualizations.

The organizing team for this year’s HackBeanpot was the largest yet, with 13 students from Northeastern and one from Boston University for the first time. The team worked year-round to raise money, partner with local tech companies, run marketing and branding, design swag, and even file taxes as a non-profit.

HackBeanpot vice president Ashna Shah (BS, Computer Science ‘20) led this year’s effort to take what many of the members learned from various co-ops and implement an agile workflow within the team. Under the direction of Appleby, who led the rebranding, HackBeanpot successfully created and marketed a new logo, website, and overall design theme to better attract the primary audience of first-time hackers and non-tech related attendees.

The fruits of HackBeanpot have long-lasting effects for the participants, many of whom will continue to flesh out the projects they started over that weekend, as well as for the organizers.

“The experience, connections and projects I’ve made at hackathons have been monumental factors in my personal and professional development,” says Appleby.

Shah is already thinking about how to apply what the leadership team learned to next year’s team dynamic while they are grooming younger members to take on eventual bigger roles. She also reflects on how a small group of volunteer leaders can pull off a successful event: “I felt really proud to watch everyone grow and see how much work our team accomplished over the past year.” She adds, “It truly was amazing being able to watch the results of all of our hard work unfold during the weekend.”