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How do you turn a kid’s love of coding into something bigger? You start with a hackathon, here’s why – hackathons are collaborative events where computer programmers, new and experienced, come together to create something with code and prepare a group presentation in just a few days. They will do this to solve an identified problem or respond to a given prompt from the organizers and leaders of the Hackathon Event. KTBYTE’s annual hackathon, KTHack 2025, is its community event of the year, as it’s completely free to attend. For KTHack 2025, students grades 7th-12th will gather to enter their coding projects for a chance to win one of over $2000 worth of prizes.
The 1st, 2nd and 3rd-place winners (Bug Hunters, StockMirror and BrainBoostAI, respectively) of KTHack 2024.
Students can play it solo, or we encourage students to work together in a team of up to four people, which they can form either before the competition start time or on the first day of the competition.
Hackathons are popular events for competitive, innovative. and createive students looking for a place to apply what they know and meet new people. They will have the unique opportunity of waching an idea come to life, working with each step to correct, adjust, communicate and revisit their work.
Hackathons: From a Student’s Perspective
“I’ve always been a big believer in learning by doing, and I think hackathons are one of the best places to do that! From my own experience, I found it amazing to see people come together, tackle challenges as a team, and actually have fun while picking up new skills.”
-Jophy Lin (KTBYTE student instructor)
Joie Yeung and Yuanheng Mao, are the KTBYTE student instructors who first reached out to KTBYTE about holding a hackathon have fond memories of participating in hackathons as the budding coders they once were, remain passionate and involved in the coordination of KTHack today. Taking their combined skill, passion and drive they’ve been able to help numerous other students explore their passion using hackathons.
Joie reflects on how she was able to utilize her creativity to invent something “unique and exciting” at each hackathon she attended, affirming that it’s “a great opportunity for those participating to gain experience and project skills.” For students just starting out, or already experienced with CS it allows them the space and structure to create with confidence, pushing the limits on what students feel they themselves are capable of.
Moreover, Yuanheng says that with this year’s KTHack, he “hopes to create an environment that will inspire others to discover new interests”, reminiscing on how he discovered his interest in AI while competing in a hackathon. The power of collective communication, and trying new things can give students perspective they won’t experience outside of the hackathon environment.
That is to say that hackathons are not just events where coders can flourish, but also opportunities for them to work on passion projects with their people. At her hackathons, Jophy (who has helped to organize every KTHack since its launch in 2023) was able to find people who were both like-minded and very different from herself, her ability to connect with these indiviuduals proved especially helpful when she wanted support on a research project and was able to call in her hackathon connections.
At hackathons, students can experiment, collaborate, create and grow. Though Joie, Yuanheng and Jophy all attended hackathons separately and had different experiences, through KTBYTE, they have come together to lead KTHack 2025 and share their collective love of hackathons with the next generation of coders.
The Origin of KTHack
Joie and Yuanheng explain why they first launched KTHack:
Joie: “Hackathons were one of the main reasons I became passionate about computer science. I loved the competitive, but also friendly, environments that all hackathons gave. When I began volunteering at hackathons, I wanted to support others’ dreams and experiences in the same way.”
Yuanheng: “As an instructor, I saw how many students would learn amazing CS skills, but never put them to use or explore them further after finishing a class. That led me to reach out to KTBYTE, since I knew that they would have the resources to support a hackathon, and they were very supportive of doing this for the community.”
Joie’s positive relationship with KTBYTE similarly led her to reach out about hosting a hackathon, as it “was a community that had helped [her] in [her] own career, so [she] wanted to give back”. When it turned out that Yuanheng harbored the same ideas as Joie, they began working together to plan KTBYTE’s first ever hackathon.
Joie, Yuanheng and other student leaders spent the next 8 months designing the event, recruiting staff, creating a website, setting up a discord server, “and all the logistics of creating this event from scratch”. For KTHack’s first year, Yuanheng remarks, “over 50 people participated with very positive feedback, and a large portion of them returned for KTHack again the next year. That told us that KTHack really had potential as an event and has helped motivate us to grow KTHack to what it is today”.
“From just an idea that Yuanheng and I shared, KTHack has become a growing community of both volunteers and participants!” Joie says.
The student leaders behind everything that goes into KTHack–the organizing, the staffing, the support–know that their work will make a difference in their attendees’ lives.
Stanley Liu, who volunteered for KTHack last year as well, has witnessed its magic. Reflecting on how the young coders collaborated and pooled together their individual specializations to create projects with great potential to help others, Stanley says: “If I’m able to help provide a space for that and see the results, that’s plenty of reason for me to volunteer again.”
KTHack 2025 Info
Where will KTHack be held? The majority of KTHack events will be held online via Discord, but this year, students can come to the KTBYTE Lexington office for the in-person KTHack workshops! On June 7th, events will occur from 9am to 9pm EST, and on June 8th they last from 9am to 5:30pm EST.
KTHack is open to coders of all levels, who will work to solve a problem based on this year’s theme of Social Impact, with sub-themes of Financial, Environmental and Educational Impact.
Hackathons are an opportunity for students to not only compete and apply their skills, but also to learn in a supportive environment. For KTHack 2025, KTBYTE student staff have volunteered to mentor and guide competitors as they simultaneously work to code and debug their projects, either being on stand-by for assistance or hosting their own specialized workshops.
Closing Summary
When your student attends a hackathon, they will:
- Collaborate with others in the coding community
- Apply their coding knowledge and learn new skills
- Discover new interests
- Create products tackling societal issues
Hackathons are an invaluable learning experience for young coders, being simultaneously a place of competition and community. KTBYTE’s student leaders are volunteering their time and energy to make KTHack 2025 another unforgettable experience, passing on what they enjoyed most about their hackathons to their participants.
Budding coders should be given the opportunity to develop and grow, show off what they know and be recognized for their efforts. Hackathons like KTHack are their chance to do just that.
More information on KTHack 2025 is listed on its website (go here to sign up): https://kthack.org/
For more information on KTBYTE and its mission, check out our main website: https://www.ktbyte.com/