HACKENSACK -- More than 400 high school students attended the inaugural hackBCA hackathon last year.

This year, the organizers hope to invite 30 more.

They won't just be any 30 kids. Intel, one of the sponsors of hackBCA, is giving scholarships to attend the all-night programming event to underprivileged high school students, including free laptops and transportation to Bergen County Academies.

"We think we can make a huge impact with underprivileged kids," Jared Zoneraich, a senior at the Academies and one of the founders of HackBCA said.

HackBCA is also focusing on another underrepresented group in technology: girls. The aim this year is for 40 percent of the participants to be girls, Zoneraich said.

Last year only 17 percent of the high school hackers were girls, average for a hackathon and close to average for the tech sector, where only about 23 percent of workers are women, but very low for real life.

HackBCA will have more of an educational focus this year. Zoneraich said last year's hackathon had the biggest impact on attendees who had never programmed before. "We thought, how can we double or triple or quadruple this impact?"

Anyone with a computer and an Internet connection can program, he said. There will be mentors on hand, mostly college students with some professional developers, to help neophytes take their first steps into coding.

"We want them to leave the hackathon and be interested and tell all their friends about it," Zoneraich said.

Zoneraich and a team of Academies students organized the first HackBCA with their school providing little more than a venue. This year, the Academies is "super on board," Zoneraich said, helping the organizers connect with the Department of Education, which in turn pointed them toward potential sponsors and other groups to work with.

Like last year, when Reddit co-founder Alex Ohanian served as a judge, HackBCA II will feature a few tech luminaries as special guests, including Tom Lehman, co-founder and CEO of the Genius annotation website, who will serve as emcee. Zoneraich said the team will announce more guests as the March 28 event approaches.

Myles Ma may be reached at mma@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @MylesMaNJ. Find NJ.com on Facebook.