St. Luke's Was Hacked

Dates: 1/15-17 Hours: 48 Participants: 60 Pizzas: 45

Cups of Coffee: 127 Ideas: Countless

St. Luke’s School just hosted its second annual 48-hour Hackathon. More than sixty students (and a few parents) participated, including 12 students and faculty guests from Wooster School. The goal of the Hackathon is to immerse in creating something...anything. A toy, a game, a serious solution to a problem. Something you wish existed but doesn’t—yet. “We had only one hard and fast rule,” said St. Luke’s designLab Director and lead Hackathon “conspirator” Michael Mitchell. “Take your concept and try to make it a reality in the next forty-eight hours.”

Co-conspirator, Assistant Head of School for Leadership and Innovation, Jim Foley thinks back to the first Hackathon and marvels: “I never imagined looking at a room packed to the gills with kids, parents, friends all waiting to pull off these amazing creations.” Mitchell agrees adding “As far as I know, we are the only 5-12 school in the area that holds a true hackathon.”

Hacks ran the gamut from a unicorn with a light up horn, to a lie detector. “We wanted to build a hoverboard,” said 7th grader Adrian Antonioli of New Canaan. “We could not get that to work, so we built a car that moved by using a big fan. That worked.”

The winning Middle School hack was a Raspberry Pi-based robot which streams live video to a website and can be wirelessly controlled from any point in the school. The robot was created by seventh grader Jack Briggs of Darien. The winning Upper School hack was an arcade-style Monopoly game created by tenth graders Bilal Memon of Norwalk and Dominic DeMarco of New Canaan. The team wrote more than 1,000 lines of Java code, used an Arduino and buttons to interface with the players, and created a retro game console cabinet using the laser cutter.

One thing all the hacks had in common: failure. “A good hack does not have to work perfectly,” advises Mitchell. “In fact, it does not have to work at all. It’s the trying, the problem-solving that’s fun and hard. We hear so much about the importance of resilience. This is resilience in action. I worked with a seventh grader who would not give up. Even I was ready to say ‘Let’s move on. It’s four in the morning!’ But he persevered.”

St. Luke’s parent and trustee Mike Diliberto of New Canaan participated in the Hackathon with his son Logan ‘18. Diliberto, the Chief Information Officer of North America at Priceline, echoes Mitchell: “I believe it is the grit and determination that will serve children well as they enter university and later in life as they enter the workforce. This was a great test of character and our students exhibited a tremendous strength of will. I didn’t see a single hack that went as it was originally planned on Friday. That is reality. Students, teachers, parents, and mentors were all forced to work through tough challenges, learning at every step. The teams never fell apart, they worked together and helped each other through the hard parts. The St Luke’s spirit of community and collaboration was on full display.”

Foley remarked on community as well expressing appreciation for alumni who returned to mentor participants—including Tyler Klein ‘15 of Stamford (Tufts), Andrew Sudano ‘13 of Wilton (RPI), Steven Gerasimoff ‘13 of Stamford (M.I.T.) and Alex Polyakov ‘10 of Norwalk (Tufts, now Microsoft).

St. Luke’s parent and trustee, David Pakman of Bedford participated for the second year with his son Sam ‘22. Pakman, a Partner at Venrock, commented on the incredible growth of the Hackathon and the sophistication of the hacks adding: “This event has grown up from an idea to a highly differentiating event for SLS. It embraces our values and our culture—team-based experiential learning in a non-standard environment, and under some duress of sleep-deprivation! This is like the real world.”