Remember to tell Iowa’s student hackers to “hop on the bus”

As our bus screeched in to Ann Arbor, Mich., surrounded by the darkness of late evening and a harassing light drizzle, I nervously guided our group into Michigan Stadium to check them in. We were only eight hours into an amazing weekend but I was already breathing a sigh of relief. We made it …

About the author: Brett Neese is a student at Iowa State University, hacker and freelance web developer from Ames, Iowa. Through his organization, Just Run Co., Neese plans events and executes movements that expose young people from the Silicon Prairie and around the world to building and creating awesome things.


As our bus screeched in to Ann Arbor, Mich., surrounded by the darkness of late evening and a harassing light drizzle, I nervously guided our group into Michigan Stadium to check them in. We were only eight hours into an amazing weekend but I was already breathing a sigh of relief. We made it.

The preparation for this trip began in mid-July, when I was contacted by one of MHacks‘ organizers who suggested I get a group from Iowa together to descend on the event. At the time, it seemed like an audacious goal, but as long as we could get a lot of students to register, we’d find a bus waiting to take us to the “Big House.” Two months, two schools, one Facebook event and 35 students later, we made it to MHacks—an event that would later officially break the record for the world’s largest student-organized hackathon.

I didn’t know what to expect. On our bus was a huge mixture of various personalities and talent. Most had never done anything remotely like this before. I watched closely as various groups for Grinnell College and Iowa State University built things. Many commented happily that this was the first time they’d actually applied the things they were learning in their courses, while others commented that this made them really excited about spending the rest of their lives “in a basement innovating.” If there was anyone on that bus who didn’t self-identify as a hacker or builder when we left, I’m certain that by the time we arrived back into Iowa, their perception had shifted.

There’s been a lot of dialogue arguing that we simply don’t have talent in Iowa. Yet Iowa State University and the state’s other universities have historically been huge catalysts for innovation in the fields of engineering and computer sciences. There’s even this big rumor that we invented the computer itself—not to mention the more recent success stories of Chegg and Hatchlings as well as other student startup stories, such as clusterFlunk out of the University of Iowa.

Maybe we’re not MIT or Stanford or Purdue. But we have a lot of talented people in this state and a dire lack of cool opportunities for them. We have some really cool startups, some really awesome incubators and some amazing conferences. Those resources, however, remain relatively inaccessible to the majority of our college-aged hackers.

While we were busy convincing ourselves we could build cool things in Iowa, we forgot to tell our aspiring student hackers to hop on the bus.

While I can’t speak towards other schools, I must admit that Iowa State hasn’t exactly helped: while the University of Michigan was slashing red tape for MHacks, Iowa State appears to have been busy putting up walls. But there’s a new sheriff in town. And thanks to MHacks, the seed for an awesome hacker community at Iowa State has been planted. We have the resources, and now we have a lot of students who are passionate about bringing a little bit of that Michigan magic to Iowa. I can’t wait to see what they come up with.

 

Credits: Event photo from Facebook

This story is part of the AIM Archive

This story is part of the AIM Institute Archive on Silicon Prairie News. AIM gifted SPN to the Nebraska Journalism Trust in January 2023. Learn more about SPN’s origin »

Channels: ,

Get the latest news and events from Nebraska’s entrepreneurship and innovation community delivered straight to your inbox every Wednesday.