Hackcelerate
Thirty-six hours, one room, far too much coffee.
Our flagship overnight hackathon brings together students from every year and every discipline to build something end-to-end in a single weekend. Teams pitch on Friday evening, build through the night, and demo to a panel of industry mentors on Sunday. No prior hackathon experience required — half of every cohort is building their first project in public.
How it runs
Pitch night
Friday opens with sixty seconds per idea and no slides allowed. Teams form in the room immediately afterwards, so nobody arrives pre-assembled.
The long night
Mentors rotate through the floor until roughly three in the morning. Most of the useful debugging happens in that window, and so does most of the pizza.
Demo and defend
Sunday is a live demo on the real thing — no recordings, no mockups. Judges ask what broke, and answering that honestly scores better than pretending nothing did.
I came in not knowing how to deploy anything. I left having shipped to a URL a stranger could open.
