Since 2023, I have been a member, and later a co-lead, for Google Developer Groups McMaster University. Throughout my time at the club, I have primarily contributed to annual hackathon as a member of the Incubator and Conferences Team.
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For our most recent series of events, check out our Mac-a-thon website: https://mac-a-thon.gdscmcmasteru.ca/
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In 2023 and 2024, the Incubator team worked on planning and executing the Solutions Challenge Hackathon. The solutions challenge is a regional and international initiative by GDG and GDSC where students would develop projects that would aim to help with or resolve issues mentioned by the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This was the team’s first in-person hackathon with a wide array of events, workshops and team-building activities. We had engaged over 200 hackers across the 3-day event from universities across Southern Ontario and students from Engineering, Computer Science, Business and more.
The most recent hackathon was the ‘Mac-a-thon’, the new name for the recurring annual event held by GDG McMasterU. This event will have a rotating theme every year based on the interests of the committee’s members and the changing event series lineup by GDG. For the 2025 hackathon, the theme was ‘Build with AI’, an event series dedicated to building solutions and projects using Google’s wide array of Artificial Intelligence tools, such as Gemini, Gemma and Google AI Studio. We engaged over 150 students last year and hosted several high quality workshops run by experts and groups that specialize in the field.
The Conferences Team Group Picture - 2025
For the 2024-2025 year, I had the incredible opportunity to be one of the Co-Leads for the Conferences Team. Along with my other co-leads - Bhravi and Leon - we accomplished a lot during the year. Our team, despite being smaller than most hackathon teams, had pulled off both the Mac-a-thon and the DevFest. We had led the team’s first initiative to become an MLH official hackathon as wel as pursued funding from third party sources.
Moving forward, our goals for the 2026 Hackathon are numerous. From becoming an MLH Hackathon, to hosting a record number of workshops and events, we are excited for the year to come and all that the team can achieve. We are planning to have our largest team yet, and dedicate a large chunk of our time to working with third parties such as brands, software development teams and non-profits.