# A quick overview
On March 5th, 2016, HackUMBC a hackathon located at the University of Maryland Baltimore County opened its doors to 400 students (a mix of both college and high school) interested in science, technology, engineering, and math. For those of you who don't know, a hackathon is an event in which its attendees spend 24 hours (more or less) to build (or hack together) a hardware or software project and then present it to judges and members of the community. Anyone can attend a hackathon and it is a valuable learning experience (many people I know have learned to code at hackathons). [Major League Hacking](https://mlh.io/) is usually a partner at most of the North American hackathons. Students submit their projects to [DevPost](http://hackumbcs16.devpost.com/) at the end of the 24 hours. The students that attend these hackathons often call themselves hackathon hackers and have multiple groups on Facebook where they share their development experiences and thoughts about a multitude of tech related fields.

http://i.imgur.com/mlwPC1e.jpg
*Students presenting their automatic coffee maker to judges in the final top 10 demos at HackUMBC Spring 2016*

# Sponsors
http://i.imgur.com/33OieOk.jpg
*Sponsors of HackUMBC 2016 shown on the back of the shirt*
Sponsors host workshops, interact with students, give professional advice about the technology they work with, and are their to support students build their projects throughout the hackathon. Sponsors also give out their own prizes to the best hacks, and have also been known to give interviews to students. Many students I know have been hired to companies from hackathons. 

Most hackathons have sponsorship packets they present to sponsors here is the complete list of sponsorship tiers and benefits for HackUMBC Fall 2016 on October 1 - 2nd:
http://i.imgur.com/mkURFSD.png

# Hackathons and the crypto community
In the past there has been little support for college hackathons by the crypto community, there have been sponsors who gave out DogeCoins or fractions of Bitcoins as prizes, but that seemed to be the extent of crypto in the world of hackathons. 

https://i.imgur.com/QpqTzJd.jpg
*I'm Nisarga a co-director of HackUMBC*

# A steemit sponsored hackathon
A steemit sponsored hackathon would include the steemit logo on every shirt, and awareness about crypto and information how to work with steemit APIs would be spread at the hackathon. Experienced members of the steemit community would be able to give talks regarding crypto and steemit over the web or in person. This Fall, HackUMBC is planning to have a social good theme.

http://i.imgur.com/pwTFitk.png

# Useful resources regarding hackathons
- [Major League Hacking Website](https://mlh.io)
- [Devpost](http://devpost.com/)
- [HackUMBC Spring 2016](http://hackumbc.org/)
- [My Medium post on cool hacks at HackUMBC](https://medium.com/@nisargap/cool-hacks-at-hackumbc-1ba8f06506a0#.ehaxveelt)

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# Thank you!
~ *Nisarga*