Overview

A suite of tools that reduced the work required to run a hackathon — battle-tested through 5 events.

Aurora is a hackathon website system providing tools for organizers, participants, and supporting members. It has been battle-tested through 5 hackathons during the 2023-2024 school year and performed exceptionally well. Scalability issues were addressed immediately in time for the next hackathon. Security issues were resolved before the initial deployments and no security breaches occurred during all 5 hackathons.

Why

The unison in Aurora is unlike any school has seen, allowing UCR hackathons to excel years in their technological development.

The hackathon website system is competitive with the same systems that UCLA, Stanford, and Berkeley use for their 700+, 1500+, and 800+ participant hackathons respectively. In some cases it exceeds their systems' capabilities. Many Ivy League schools do not have systems comparable to UCR due to the advancements in Aurora. Without the system today, many of the newer hackathons — primarily Bearhack and DesignVerse — would have to spend several years before they could build such a system independently. CutieHack, RoseHack, and CitrusHack, the more mature hackathons, would still have to spend a few more years before catching up in terms of development.

My Role

Aurora holds a special place in my journey — it was filled with many firsts.

It was the first time I rediscovered my passion for building, the first time I worked closely with a team, and the first time I found a group of like-minded people I had been searching for during my first two years of college. It also marked my first real exposure to full-stack web development. This project was instrumental in shaping my growth as a developer. I went from fixing small bugs to working on databases, building static pages, creating a real-time judging interface, and optimizing API routes. Aurora pushed me to constantly learn and improve, ultimately helping me become the developer I am today.