A horrific and heartbreaking surge in violence against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) is happening across the US. As our commitment to uplifting and protecting the AAPI community, we want to unite the Tech communities to stand with the AAPI community.
On April 2, we hosted #TechforAAPI Virtual Rally. Together with Evan Low (Assembly Member), Deborah Liu (CEO of Ancestry), Adam Mosseri (Head of Instagram), Li Fan (ex-CTO of Lime, ex-SVP of Pinterest), Hans Tung (General Partner of GGV Capital), Eric Kim (Co-founder and Managing Partner of Goodwater Capital), Yardley Pohl (Board Member of Women In Product), Tom Giles (Executive Editor of Bloomberg News Global Technology Team), Suzanne St. John-Crane (CEO of American Leadership Forum Silicon Valley), Eugene Zhang (Founding Partner of TSVC & TEEC Angel Fund), Lake Dai (HYSTA Chairwomen & President, CMU Professor, LDVP Partner), Han Shen (Founding Partner of iFlyVC), Bill Jia (VP of Engineering at Facebook), Xiaoliang "David" Wei (VP of Engineering at Facebook), Vijay Bharadwaj (VP of Product Innovation of Netflix), and many leaders, ~800 people joined and discussed how the tech community can join forces to combat racism and create positive social change.
“It’s not enough to agree, you have to act too. No matter who you are, if you care, get involved.” - said Adam Mosseri, Head of Instagram.
We believe a hackathon can not only inspire the next billion-dollar unicorns but also help unite mission-driven innovators drive positive social changes with the help of technology. We look for product people and developers across the globe to participate and create works, including but not limited to product prototypes, coding, user experience design, and business/social impact models.
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Join our official Slack workspace: Tech For AAPI
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Follow the schedule and take actions before the deadlines.
| Date | Main activities |
|---|---|
| May 1 - May 23 | Sign-up for HackForChange Registration Link |
| May 10 - May 23 | Idea contribution and team formation Online Form |
| May 23, 1 pm - 4 pm PST | Join our Hackathon Kick-Off Event (including lightning pitch session) |
| May 24 - Jun 4 | Hands-on (teamwork) and team formation continues |
| June 4, 6 pm PST | Submission deadline Submission Form |
| June 5 | Preliminary Round |
| June 6 | Final Pitch Competition and Awards Ceremony |
Please submit your work via this Submission Form by 6pm PST, June 4, 2021.
- Each team please submit a 3-minute video to demonstrate your solution.
- We recommend you give an elevator pitch at the beginning, followed by the demo.
- Slides deck is optional but recommended.
- Please rename your documents with your team_name and project_name. For example, Oasis_UnityBook_Video, Oasis_UnityBook_PitchDeck, etc.
Please attention: The size of each file you submit must be less than 100M.
We welcome code submission to our GitHub repository. You can refer to the document to submit your code work.
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3 teams will be selected by social media votes.
The organizer committee will upload each of your video to our YouTube channel. Please try to get as many Likes on YouTube as possible. The top 3 teams will enter the final round.
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7 teams will be selected by mentors.
Each mentor will select up to 5 projects and distribute 5 scores to the projects. 7 teams who ranked the highest by the mentors will enter the final round.
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We will announce the 10 teams that enter the final round by 6pm PDT, June 5, 2021
Each team will have a 5-minute pitch and a 3-min Q&A session.
You can play your video or make a presentation during the pitch time.
Q: What is the purpose of this Hackathon?
In response to rising inequality and incidence of hate crimes, it is critical for the tech community to come together in support of the AAPI community and to tackle challenges with a creative approach. We believe that open collaboration across the globe can increase the likelihood of success for building innovative solutions. Thus, we are excited to rally everyone, particularly those with experiences in engineering, product or technology more broadly to build creative technical solutions.
Q: Who are the organizers?
We are the same group of passionate Tech people who hosted #TechforAAPI Virtual Rally. We come from Tech companies like Netflix, Pinterest, and Salesforce and communities including GongYouJi(工友记), Product Pub, Shinect, SJTU-SV, THAA-NC, The Society of Heart’s Delight (瑜园社), UXRenUS, and X-lab.
Q: Who is eligible to participate?
We are seeking individuals who can leverage exponential technologies of their choice to deliver locally focused or globally relevant solutions for a range of challenge areas sourced from the AAPI community. We aim to bring in individuals who can leverage skills including but not limited to product prototyping, coding, user experience design and business/social impact models among others to build effective solutions in support of the AAPI community.
Q: Can I participate if I can't write code?
Yes. We welcome three types of audiences and participants: 1) Individuals that can contribute in a team, 2) Judges and mentors, such as entrepreneurs, social innovators, venture capitalists, etc, 3) Anyone who is interested in this activity and would like to observe and learn. Moreover, you can also join our series of activities hosted during the hackathon. It will be a good opportunity for you to observe and learn.
Q: Can I participate if I don’t have an idea in mind?
Yes. You can join the other team and contribute in coding, designing, marketing, and etc. You can also buy the audience ticket and join the official discussion group. Through observing and studying, you may spark ideas with others
Q: Can I sign up without a team?
Yes. You will have the opportunity to pitch your ideas during the Lightning Pitch sessions, and find potential team members through such events and our Slack channels.
Q: What will I get if I contribute?
As a participant in the hackathon (open to anyone interested), you would have the opportunity to work closely with teammates who share your passion as well as to learn insights from leaders in tech who will be assigned to each participating team as mentors. All teams and participants will have the opportunity to publicly demonstrate their work, including potential coverage by media partners of the Tech for AAPI Alliance. This hackathon will take place over 3 weeks, by the end of which judges and social media will vote for the best teams to receive grants to make their respective projects a reality. All projects will be open sourced and hosted on GitHub during the period of the hackathon, maximizing the team’s chance to be noticed by investors more broadly and hopefully long-term sustainable.
Q: What are the expected deliverables & workloads?
A 2~5 min demo video is recommended for the final evaluation. You would also be given an opportunity to demonstrate your solution in a free-form format, in a safe and cozy environment. You have approximately two weeks’ hands-on time, that’s primarily because some participants have a full-time job and have very limited bandwidth on weekdays. Feel free to spend time based on your own availability and bandwidth!
Q: How to submit my work?
Please follow the instructions on our GitHub page to submit your work.
Bill Jia, VP Engineering at Facebook
Edward Kao, Physician and Healthcare Executive at Kaiser Permanente
Eugene Zhang, Founding Partner of TSVC
Joann Wu, VP, Product Design at LinkedIn
John Midgley, Director of Engineering at Netflix
Lake Dai, Chairwoman & President of HYSTA, Partner of LDVP, CMU Professor
Peter Wang, CTO at BuzzFeed
Sui Huang, Director of Member Product Data Science and Engineering at Netflix
Ruoruo (Lily) Zhang, Director of Engineering at Instacart
Virginia Liu, Senior VP of Marketing and Ecosystems at Agora
Wendy Nguyen, Co-organizer of Stand with Asian Americans, SVP of Growth at Section4
Xiaodan Wang, Director, Product Design at Facebook
Anuj Madan Product Lead at Facebook
Bingfeng Xia Engineering Manager at LinkedIn; President of Tsinghua Alumni Association of Northern California (THAA-NC)
Changqing Mu Senior Manager at Charles Schwab
Chen Zheng Co-founder/President of Product Pub, Guest Lecturer for Stanford University, and Advisor of DonatePPE. She is an educator for Product Management, and currently working as Director of Product Innovation at Netflix.
Chris Baker Product Manager at Facebook
Dan Chern Product Manager at Facebook
Darya Kishylau Product Manager at Facebook
Elliot Peng Product Designer at Microsoft
Gene Chuang Tech Advisor, Angel Investor, CTO Slackers
Greg Lin Tanaka Palo Alto City Council, Founder and CEO @Percolata, Congressional Candidate
Haimo Liu Staff Product Manager at Alibaba cloud, based in Silicon Valley. Also a board member and Chief Content Officer of Product Pub
Jasmine Xu Product Manager at Facebook
Jason Liu Sr Product Designer at Salesforce, Co-founder of UXRenUS
Kun Gu People Analytics Manager at Facebook, president of Lightinghouse career mentorship program
Lisha Huang Product Manager at Facebook
Luca Candela Product Manager at Facebook
Luke Lu Founder of Tourmato
Lydia Tang Senior Software Engineer at Netflix; Director at Product Pub
Mitali Paintal Product Manager at Facebook
Parth Sethi Product Manager at Facebook
Quoc Le Member of Technical Staff at WiteSand
Rongfei Geng UX Designer at Google
Ruijing (Jill) Ren Chief of Staff, Office of CEO at Verdigris. An industry ESG practitioner who aspires to create the change through long-term social innovation
Shaobo Sun Engineering Manager at Quizlet
Shu Dong President of ABC Blockchain Community, Software Engineer at Facebook
Shu Jiang UX Designer at Google, mentor at UX Coffee Hours, owner of YouTube channel Yobi321
Vish Bindage Growth Product Manager at Facebook
Vivia Liu UX designer and Design Sprint leader at Google, owner of YouTube and Bilibili channel: ViviaDesign
Wilson Hong Tech Lead at Facebook
Xander Wu Vice Chairman of Wuhan2020 community and advisor to X-lab; Mentor at Plug and Play
Xia Hong Senior Data Scientist at LinkedIn
Xu (Frank) Liu Staff Engineer at Illumina. Executive Director, University of Science and Technology of China Initiative Foundation, North America
Yaxiong Zhao Founding Engineer at NamePixie
Ying Fang TL at Google
Zhimin Zong Engineering Manager at Robinhood
Lake Dai, CMU Adjunct Professor of Applied AI
Xiao-Liang Qi, Stanford Professor of Physics
Shuo Chen, UC Berkeley Faculty of Entrepreneurship
