LA Hacks is an annual student-led

hackathon A hackathon (also known as a hack day, hackfest, datathon or codefest; a portmanteau of '' hacking'' and ''marathon'') is an event where people engage in rapid and collaborative engineering over a relatively short period of time such as 24 or 48 h ...

hosted at the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school the ...

(UCLA)'s

Pauley Pavilion Edwin W. Pauley Pavilion, commonly known as Pauley Pavilion, is an indoor arena located in the Westwood Village district of Los Angeles, California, on the campus of UCLA. It is home to the UCLA Bruins men's and women's basketball teams. Th ...

. According to UCLA in 2020, it is Southern California's largest annual hackathon.

History

LA Hacks was co-founded by UCLA students Hadar Dor and Alvin Hsia. The inaugural event was held on April 27–28, 2013 at CrossCampus in

Santa Monica Santa Monica (; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Santa Mónica'') is a city in Los Angeles County, California, Los Angeles County, situated along Santa Monica Bay on California's South Coast (California), South Coast. Santa Monica's 2020 United Sta ...

. There were about 250 people in attendance and over 150 students from universities across Southern California competed in the 24 hours event. LA Hacks Wikipedia

In April 2014, there were 4,000 people registered and about 1,300 to 1,500 participants. This was held at

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the C ...

for 36 hours. Special guests came to speak at LA Hacks, including

Evan Spiegel Evan Thomas Spiegel (born June 4, 1990) is an American businessman, co-founder and CEO of Snap Inc. Spiegel was the youngest billionaire in the world in 2015. , he had a personal net worth of $2.6 billion according to ''Forbes''. Early li ...

, founder and CEO of

Snapchat Snapchat is an American multimedia social media and instant messaging app and service developed by Snap Inc., originally Snapchat Inc. One of the principal features of the app are that pictures and messages, known as "snaps", are usually availa ...

Alexis Ohanian Alexis Kerry Ohanian (; born April 24, 1983) is an American internet entrepreneur and investor. He is best known as the co-founder and former executive chairman of the social media site Reddit along with Steve Huffman and Aaron Swartz. He also ...

, co-founder of

Reddit Reddit ( ) is an American Proprietary software, proprietary social news news aggregator, aggregation and Internet forum, forum Social media, social media platform. Registered users (commonly referred to as "redditors") submit content to the ...

, Baiju Bhatt, co-founder of Robinhood, and Adam Singolda, CEO of

Taboola Taboola, Inc. is a Public company, publicly traded advertising and technology company headquartered in New York City. It provides "content recommendation" adverts on its partner websites. History Taboola was founded in 2007 by Adam Singolda. The ...

. Their hacks were judged by top tech industry professionals (i.e.

Sam Altman Samuel Harris Altman (born April 22, 1985) is an American technology entrepreneur, investor, and the chief executive officer of OpenAI since 2019 (he was Removal of Sam Altman from OpenAI, briefly dismissed and reinstated in November 2023). He ...

– President of

Y Combinator Y Combinator, LLC (YC) is an American technology startup accelerator and venture capital firm launched in March 2005 which has been used to launch more than 5,000 companies. The accelerator program started in Boston and Mountain View, Californi ...

, Chris De Wolfe – CEO of SGN and Founder of

Myspace Myspace (formerly stylized as MySpace, currently myspace; and sometimes my␣, with an elongated Whitespace character#Substitute images, open box symbol) is a social networking service based in the United States. Launched on August 1, 2003, it w ...

). In April 2016, the

Los Angeles bid for the 2024 Summer Olympics The Los Angeles bid for the 2024 Summer Olympics and Summer Paralympics was an attempt to bring the Summer Olympic Games to the city of Los Angeles, California in 2024. Following withdrawals by other bidding cities during the 2024 Summer Oly ...

signed on as a sponsor. The committee presented two challenges in which students were asked to create apps that would promote fitness and enhance the fan experience at live sporting events. LA Hacks 2020 was hosted virtually due to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

References

University of California, Los Angeles Software developer communities Hackathons {{Compu-prog-stub