Girl Develop It is hosting its first East Coast regional hackathon in Wilmington

For the past year, Girl Develop It’s Wilmington chapter has experienced a number of successes: the membership has grown to 600 members and it recently won Tech Mission Org of the Year at the Delaware Innovation Awards.
What’s next? The chapter, which runs coding and other kinds of tech classes for women, gets to host a national Girl Develop It (GDI) event: the first-ever East Coast hackathon will be held at 1313 Innovation next weekend.
That means that GDI members from Philadelphia, Camden County, Lehigh Valley and Baltimore chapters will all be invited, a total of nearly 6,700 members in the region. It’s a big win for Wilmington, another event that’s attracting out-of-town technologists in the vein of coding competition {OpenBracket.
Why Wilmington?
“Capital One generously supported the hackathon and was really excited about the opportunity to host in Wilmington to engage their employees to give back as volunteer mentors,” said Girl Develop It executive director Corinne Warnshuis, who’s based in Philadelphia. “We’re also very excited to shine the light on the amazing momentum our Wilmington chapter has built over the past year.”
Tickets cost $15.
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The idea is to create a welcoming environment to learn new things and meet new people, like GDI members Gillian Reynolds and Dany Bourjolly Smith. GDI is specifically looking for beginners as there will be no competition involved with this two-day event.
Warnshuis stressed that it is not an overnight event out of respect for the time of the event’s participants. “This shorter schedule reduces stress and doesn’t eat up your whole weekend,” she said.
The first day will include a brainstorming and idea generation session, along with a lowkey meet and greet, while the next day will include skills-building workshops, project building and presentations (with breaks, of course.)
During the same weekend, Seattle will be hosting a similar hackathon for West Coast chapters.
Interested in teaching or volunteering? You can apply here.