An inclusive all-women & non-binary hackathon.

February 5-6, 2021

Thank you for attending FemmeHacks 2021!
We'd love to see you at FemmeHacks 2022

About FemmeHacks

What is FemmeHacks?

Now running on our 7th year, FemmeHacks is a two-day collegiate hackathon hosted at the University of Pennsylvania by the university’s Women in Computer Science chapter. FemmeHacks aims to empower, educate, and inspire women and non-binary folks across the nation. After forming teams, attendees build a variety of web, mobile, and hardware applications, learn from workshops, and attend various speaker events. This year, FemmeHacks will be held virtually.

Who can attend?

FemmeHacks welcomes trans and cis women, non-binary, and gender non-conforming people of all levels of experience – equality for all! Participants range from students from a variety of schools such as University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, Drexel, Rutgers, Bryn Mawr, Villanova, Temple, Haverford, as well as young talents from Philadelphia high schools looking to break into the tech field. Last year, we had over 200 attendees!

Why attend FemmeHacks?

FemmeHacks is committed to education — we’ve hosted workshops on all sorts of topics, including GitHub, web development, iOS development and computer graphics. FemmeHacks also gives attendees the opportunity to connect with other women and non-binary people in the general tech community. Last year, over 87% of our attendees said they made at least one valuable connection with a fellow student or mentor! We also have free swag for all attendees and company-sponsored prizes for hackathon winners.

2021 Schedule

All the meeting links are available on our Airtable -- please check the Event Location section in the acceptance email to find the Airtable link! All times are in Eastern Standard Time (EST).

February 5 (Friday)

3:00pm - 6:00pm: Check-in
3:00pm - 4:30pm: Introductions & Team Formation on Discord
4:30pm - 5:00pm: Opening Ceremony
5:00pm - 6:00pm: Sponsors Meet n' Greet!
6:00pm - 6:45pm: [Beginner] Intro to Git with Andrea Baric
6:00pm - 6:45pm: [Intermediate] Intro to UI/UX with Sanjana
7:00pm - 7:45pm: [Beginner] Intro to Web Dev with Hack4Impact
7:00pm - 8:00pm: Google Cloud Workshop [pre-recorded]
8:00pm - 8:45pm: [Beginner] Intro to iOS with Steph Tang
8:00pm - 8:45pm: [Intermediate] Intermediate Web Dev with Hack4Impact
9:00pm - 9:30pm: Speed Dating & Team Formation
9:30pm - 10:30pm: Discord Game Night (Among Us, Code Names, & more!)

February 6 (Saturday)

8:00am: Hacking Starts
8:00am - 9:30am: Office Hours – Ideation
10:00am - 11:00am: Facebook Panel and Q & A
11:00am - 12:00pm: Add SMS and Voice to your Apps with Twilio
11:00am - 12:00pm: Start-up Workshop with Krish
11:30am - 12:00pm: Soulsmile Club: Tech for Social Good
12:00pm - 1:00pm: Women in Tech Panel!
1:00pm - 2:00pm: How to Ace Tech Interviews with Vanguard
2:00pm - 4:00pm: Skribbl on Discord
2:00pm - 3:00pm: Workout session with Urban Outfitters
2:00pm - 2:30pm: The Percentage Project: Data-Driven Advocacy
3:00pm - 4:00pm: Product Management 101 with Microsoft PM Andrea Baric
4:30pm - 5:00pm: Venture Capital Workshop with Wiress
6:00pm: Draft Submission to Devpost
8:40pm: Final Submission Deadline
8:50pm - 10:00pm: Judging Time
8:50pm - 9:30pm: Demo Fair
9:30pm - 10:00pm: Trivia Night!
10:30pm - 10:45pm: Closing Ceremony

Frequently Asked Questions

If you have any other questions, please don't hesitate to email pennfemmehacks@gmail.com!

General

FemmeHacks is a 2-day long event for women, non-binary folks, and historically underrepresented groups to form teams, brainstorm an idea, and build it into execution.

This year, FemmeHacks will take place on February 5th-6th, 2021. Because of COVID-19, FemmeHacks will be held entirely virtually, so you can hack from the comfort of your home!

We will be using Discord for communication purposes and Zoom for workshops! All meeting links will be compiled into an Airtable that only registered participants have access to.

Past attendees have made all sorts of web, mobile, and hardware applications. View projects that our attendees built last year here!

Yes! We'll be shipping all domestic attendees FemmeHacks stickers, and hackers who submit project to Devpost will receive free t-shirts and face masks :)

Please write to us at pennfemmehacks@gmail.com. We’re happy to help.

Registration

Any women-identifying or non-binary folk can attend FemmeHacks, regardless of physical location. Because this year is virtual, we especially encourage people from outside of Philly to apply as well!

Registrations will be considered on a rolling basis until January 29, 2021. After then, we will only consider applications if we have the capacity for more hackers.

Nope — attending FemmeHacks is completely free.

Absolutely. FemmeHacks is specificlaly made to be beginner-friendly – plenty of our previous hackers have come in without any coding knowledge. We host plenty of beginner-friendly workshops, such as Introduction to Web Development (HTML/CSS) and Introduction to Python, to teach our hackers coding from scratch. We also have plenty of mentors to help you during the hackathon itself.

Yes! We’ll have team formation and ideation workshops to help you find great people to work with on an idea that excites you. Many past attendees have formed teams or brainstormed ideas during the hackathon – we encourage you to register regardless!