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The inaugural MHacks Hackathon was a great success due to the 550+ top-notch student hackers who gave it their all, the phenomenal team running the event, and one man’s efforts to make a crazy nightmare of an event the smoothest most epic experience it could be. Thinking back to the event and the planning that led up to it, I can’t thank Mr. David Disney, the GM of Palmer Commons, enough for dreaming up MHacks with us. Where any other building director would have ran at the first sight of an event this crazy, Mr. Disney said, “let’s do it.”

Never before have I worked with a faculty member and authority figure as supportive and cooperative as Mr. Disney. Forget about venue directors who work against your ambitious planning. I sure did. From the moment we walked into Mr. Disney’s office, he wanted to help us truly make this the most epic hackathon ever.

Our first meeting began with Mr. Disney saying “I really want you to help me say yes,” and that man does everything in his power to say just that. On top of allowing the craziness of MHacks to ensue in Palmer Commons, Mr. Disney aided us along every step of the way, even helping our team solve some of the problems of doing a hackathon at this scale. Overhearing us discussing how to deal with well over 100 teams demoing, he came up with the idea that eventually turned into our open expo – over 150 members of the Ann Arbor community showed up to see what students had built that weekend. We look forward to creating more epicness at the beautiful Palmer Commons, and I can’t end this post without saying that Mr. Disney is the man.

Mr. Disney, from the MHacks team and all the student hackers and sponsors who took part, thank you!

A couple sleeps underneath computer consoles during the MHacks V Hackathon on North Campus in Ann Arbor, MI on January 17, 2015.

The event was a 36 hour hackathon in which student teams came up with hacks (applications).

Photo: Joseph Xu, Michigan Engineering, Communications & Marketing