A sleepy college student pulls himself out of his sleeping bag as the morning sun illuminates the Covens Conference Center. Spread around, coders sit on round tables, click on their keyboards. A woman in an FIU sweater runs back and forth through the window, waving her arms and nodding her head to the music. A young man in a large fishing hat throws a beach ball across the floor, running between tables decorated with bags of Cheetos and soda cans.
Time is running out on the 36-hour coding marathon known as ShellHacks. Each hacker here has a seemingly different approach to their craft, but they share one very powerful commonality, creating a massive community that attracts some of the biggest businesses in the world.
Every year students with a passion for technology are invited to create a computer application at ShellHacks. Hosted by Upsilon Pi Epsilon (UPE) at FIU, this year’s ShellHacks was once again the largest hackathon in Florida. Sponsors of the process are Google, Microsoft, Meta and other top companies like Statefarm, Capital One and Casea.
ShellHacks 2022 marked the first in-person event since 2019. With 36 hours to code, students made apps related to virtual reality, gaming, money management, philanthropy, and more. Participants had the option of working in groups or individually.
“You find a place, set it up and start coding,” said Alex Chirinos, a junior computer science major at FIU. “When you’re done or burned out, you go downstairs, enjoy your meal, relax and then go back to grinding.”
In between the coding sessions, workshops took hackers to the event to hone their skills with their applications and a job fair connected students with recruiters from high-tech companies.
Cesar Villa-Garcia ’18, founder of UPE and one of the organization’s alumni board members, said ShellHacks has become a pipeline for FIU students to reach the top of tech careers.
“Whether it’s local sponsors here in Miami or sponsors from the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle or New York, I love to see them come to support,” Villa-Garcia said. “These are companies coming down to Miami specifically to hire FIU and Miami tech talent. We’ve been able to show year after year that the talent is here.”
Villa-Garcia said more than 500 participants were from FIU’s College of Engineering and Computing. From 2017 to 2022, the number of undergraduates in FIU’s Knight School of Computing and Information Science increased by 99%. Hundreds of students from the University of Florida, University of Central Florida and University of South Florida came to ShellHacks.
Applications are reviewed by industry experts and awards are given to winners. However, ShellHacks was not just a competition. Attendees who aren’t ready to participate in a hackathon but want to learn more about technology also come and participate in workshops, Super Smash Bros. competitions, Pokemon trivia, and cup stacking competitions.
Since its inception in 2014, more than 4,000 FIU students and alumni have participated with UPE at FIU, Villa-Garcia says. As FIU continues to produce tech talent, the organization continues to grow.
