At Hack the North, we had the honor of presenting Waterloo student hackers with their second First Place MLH season trophy. It takes a lot of time and dedication to win the MLH season, and Waterloo student hackers showed what they were capable of by participating in sixteen different hackathons in the Spring semester and winning many of them.

We will be awarding Waterloo hackers a prize of $5,000 worth of cutting-edge hardware from our Spring 2016 flagship partners, Dell and Intel. We can’t wait to see the increasingly impressive hacks they’ll be able to build with this new gear!

Top High School – Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology

Congratulations to Thomas Jefferson High School for being the top high school for a second season! This season they hosted their first MLH Member Event, HackTJ, where we saw some of the most passionate students of the season and a brilliantly supportive school. We’re really excited to see the high school hacker community growing and well done to the students of Thomas Jefferson High School for helping lead the way!

Top Mexican School – Tecnológico de Monterrey

Tec de Monterrey is home to HackMTY which took place just a few weeks ago. The students at Tec are some of the most imaginative hackers we’ve seen. One of our favourite hacks we’ve seen from them is Spoiler Defense. Using facial recognition, Spoiler Defense scans your Facebook wall looking for characters from your favorite TV shows, so that you can avoid discovering who the latest casualty was from last night’s Game of Thrones.

We can’t wait to go to more hackathons in Mexico this season. Watch out for MXHacks IV, TecmiHacks, and more to be announced soon!

Visitor’s Cup – Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya

As the highest ranking European school in the North American Season, UPC from Barcelona wins the Visitor’s Cup for the third year running! UPC regularly sends their best and brightest hackers to events in North America and they blow people away with stunning hacks. UPC have also climbed up to number five in the European rankings, sending more and more students to events all over Europe. Watch out for their hackathon HackUPC at the start of October. It’s one of the most anticipated events of the year.

Get Involved

We’ve already announced over 60 events in the 2017 Season. We’d love to see you at one of them! You can find a hackathon near you on the 2017 Season Page.

Never been to a hackathon before? Don’t worry! Hackathons are for beginners too! We are also organising Local Hack Day on December 3rd which is a one-day introduction to hackathons. More than 100 events will take place at the same time all over the world. Throughout the day, there will be awesome chatrooms, and fun activities that you can use to meet students in your local community as well as across the globe.

Aiming to win can be fun but remember that above all hackathons are about learning, building and sharing.

Happy Hacking!