Crania UNHackathon
Why an UNHackathon?
Most hackathons focus on rapid deployment with students coding through the night and relying on large cloud platforms by default. While fast results can be exciting, they frequently come at the cost of control over information, privacy, and long-term financial implications.
The Crania UNHackathon intentionally takes on a different approach. It focuses on:
- Partnerships with local businesses or non-profit organizations
- Open-Source development allowing control over information
- Lowering financial barriers so that partners are not locked into ongoing subscriptions or licensing costs
- Privacy of information through minimal data collection
- Healthy, daytime hours only, prioritizing learning and well-being
- Workshops by experts in the field
For the partner businesses and organizations, this means gaining tools they can fully control and adapt, without ongoing fees or platform lock-in, and with privacy and data ownership built in from the start.
By reducing reliance on large, centralized platforms, students learn that technology can empower communities rather than control them.
This is why we call it an UNHackathon — we are intentionally undoing dependence, opacity, and barriers, and replacing them with ownership, privacy, and access.
Rules
- Students can work in groups of 1-3 people
- Students must identify a local business or non-profit that app applies to
- Student code must be open source
- Students must set up a local server
Eligibility
- Middle School Students (Grades 7-8)
- High School Students (Grades 9-12)
- University Students
- Graduate Students
- Participants must be self-driven and have at least one year of coding experience