Help me get to PennApps
Donation protected
Ever since I was 13 and making my first websites from scratch, I've had a keen interest in computer science that could never truly be cultivated due to my environment.
Being raised in Charlotte, NC, about four hours away from the Research Triangle Park (the amalgamation of the regions surrounding Duke University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and NC State University) and a solid 23 hours away from Silicon Valley, I never truly had an environment of peers as excited about computer science as I was.
In Spring 2014, I joined a Facebook group called High School Hackers, and I basically found the clique I'd been looking for all through high school. Coincidentally, there was a girl who went to my high school and was in that same Facebook group. She was now a student at the University of Pennsylvania, and she told me about this hackathon she was helping organize, called PennApps.
When she first mentioned it, I thought a hackathon was this weird blackhat thing where everyone got around to try and find security breaches. I learned it's actually a 48-hour competition to take your laptop and a handful of electronics and just build some awesome software within that timeframe. There's sponsors from huge companies like Google, Facebook, Palantir, Jane Street, Goldman Sachs, you name it.
It's a biannual competition that I applied to that spring, but since it's known to be one of the best hackathons in the world, I didn't get in with my novice skills as a 14 year old with nothing unique. Regardless, I applied that fall with the same decision. And in Spring 2015. And in Fall 2015. And in Spring 2016. And in Fall 2016.
I was shocked to see this constant stream of denials. I made a post on Facebook in this tech satire group of 9,000 kids where I figured there had to be at least one Penn student who could help me figure out what I was doing wrong.
I ended up getting memed every single day for this, and everytime the PennApps Facebook page posted anything, I'd be tagged in the comments with a stupid joke.
It peaked when Sergey Smirnov even made a counter to see how many days would go by without me getting meme'd. Needless to say, it remained at a constant 0.
I applied to PennApps XVI, and finally got the acceptance I'd been longing for. However, I'm not coming from anywhere close; my travel options are either a 16-17 hour Greyhound with expensive electronics that's probably not a great idea, or a $300 flight to Philadelphia.
I wasn't going to make this GoFundMe just for a hackathon, but the immense love and support from friends on Facebook truly inspired me, and I really want to meet them all and give them a personal thank you. The best way to do that is at PennApps XVI in September, and I need to find a way to get there.
Thank you so much for your support!
Being raised in Charlotte, NC, about four hours away from the Research Triangle Park (the amalgamation of the regions surrounding Duke University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and NC State University) and a solid 23 hours away from Silicon Valley, I never truly had an environment of peers as excited about computer science as I was.
In Spring 2014, I joined a Facebook group called High School Hackers, and I basically found the clique I'd been looking for all through high school. Coincidentally, there was a girl who went to my high school and was in that same Facebook group. She was now a student at the University of Pennsylvania, and she told me about this hackathon she was helping organize, called PennApps.
When she first mentioned it, I thought a hackathon was this weird blackhat thing where everyone got around to try and find security breaches. I learned it's actually a 48-hour competition to take your laptop and a handful of electronics and just build some awesome software within that timeframe. There's sponsors from huge companies like Google, Facebook, Palantir, Jane Street, Goldman Sachs, you name it.
It's a biannual competition that I applied to that spring, but since it's known to be one of the best hackathons in the world, I didn't get in with my novice skills as a 14 year old with nothing unique. Regardless, I applied that fall with the same decision. And in Spring 2015. And in Fall 2015. And in Spring 2016. And in Fall 2016.
I was shocked to see this constant stream of denials. I made a post on Facebook in this tech satire group of 9,000 kids where I figured there had to be at least one Penn student who could help me figure out what I was doing wrong.
I ended up getting memed every single day for this, and everytime the PennApps Facebook page posted anything, I'd be tagged in the comments with a stupid joke.
It peaked when Sergey Smirnov even made a counter to see how many days would go by without me getting meme'd. Needless to say, it remained at a constant 0.
I applied to PennApps XVI, and finally got the acceptance I'd been longing for. However, I'm not coming from anywhere close; my travel options are either a 16-17 hour Greyhound with expensive electronics that's probably not a great idea, or a $300 flight to Philadelphia.
I wasn't going to make this GoFundMe just for a hackathon, but the immense love and support from friends on Facebook truly inspired me, and I really want to meet them all and give them a personal thank you. The best way to do that is at PennApps XVI in September, and I need to find a way to get there.
Thank you so much for your support!
Organizer
Andy Kamath
Organizer
Charlotte, NC
