Costa senior Dennis Freyman and junior Hao Lin gained skills, opportunities, and victories at LA Tech Week after taking home first place in a Reddit-Hosted Hackathon against professionals, college students, and graduate competitors with a creative, community-driven coding project.
For Freyman and Lin, the win was about more than just a prize. Both longtime coders, and presidents of Costa’s Cybersecurity and AI Clubs, they entered the competition to challenge themselves and connect with others who share their same passion for technology.
“We’ve both coded a lot since middle school, and wanted to connect with people who have the same interests, learn more about coding in general, and find new opportunities in the field,” said Hao.
Small teams and individuals competed in the Reddit-Hosted Hackathon by building projects inspired by a specific given prompt. Participants were tasked with designing a Reddit-oriented game that would foster community engagement.
“In a Hackathon, you get a prompt or a confine, and are competing to try to build the coolest project that the judges are most impressed with,” said Freyman. “In this case, we were tasked with building a Reddit-oriented game that brought the community together.”
Lin and Freyman developed a project centered on friendly competition between Reddit communities, allowing subreddits to face off in daily games.
“We were given examples beforehand, like building something where the community can collaborate and something everyone can participate in,” Freyman said. “So we thought to build something that makes communities go against each other. Our project ended up being all about creating a daily game that had the different subreddits compete against each other.”
Their creativity and innovative thinking earned them first place and a $100 prize, but the two saw the win as a step towards even greater opportunities.
“This is our first time working together in a competition, and I think we did great,” said Freyman. “Although we did win a prize, we saw it more as a lead-in opportunity for a bigger, more advanced competition.”
Beyond the competition, both students viewed LA Tech Week as a chance to network with professionals and expand their startup experience and coding careers.
“I think the most valuable thing that we got out of the whole experience was the connections,” said Freyman. “It was at Reddit Headquarters in Santa Monica, so we got to meet a lot of board members for Reddit, professors, and graduate students. It was a really good experience for networking and getting opportunities outside of just a competition.”
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