Technology majors are often labeled ‘socially awkward.’
FIU students have torn that stereotype to pieces.
Every year, a group of students at INIT FIU organizes ShellHacks, the largest hackathon in Florida. A hackathon is a tech event where participants collaborate to build software projects, like apps, games and other products.
What started in 2017 with a hundred attendees has grown into a sprawling 36-hour competition featuring workshops, a career fair with 85-plus recruiters, and prize pools that include Apple M3 laptops and AirPods. Planning begins nine months in advance and involves ordering 100 pounds of mac and cheese and 9,500 cans of soda.
FIU News sat down with three key participants from this year’s hackathon to find out how the event comes together.
Elizabeth Hechavarria is a cybersecurity major and the senior director of ShellHacks. Skylar Hall is a computer science senior and leads technical workshops at INIT FIU.
Alumnus Cesar Villa-Garcia co-founded INIT FIU and ShellHacks. A product manager at American Express, he remains involved in the hackathon as an alum.
What sets ShellHacks apart from other hackathons?
Hall: ShellHacks is our heart and soul. And because we take such good care and preparation, we bring top companies and top talent. We obsess over the theming, the marketing, the layout, the food and the technical support. Most of all, the people here are super nice, and everyone wants to help each other.
Villa-Garcia: One reason we draw such large crowds is that word has spread that FIU is a really great school to start your career in technology. The corporate presence at the hackathon is massive. Our students and alumni keep getting big internships and job opportunities. Also, FIU as a university has made a lot of investments in the computer science and technology space. I think that both things have increased the attention on ShellHacks.
Just how big is the corporate presence at ShellHacks?
Hechavarria: We're looking at 35-plus sponsors. Each sponsor usually brings a team of recruiters so that they can speak to multiple students at once. We had around 100 recruiters in total this year to speak to our nearly 1,500 attendees.
How many of these recruiters are FIU alumni?
Hechavarria: At least 40%. The whole Microsoft team this year was made up of alumni.
State Farm, almost the whole team was alumni. We had a few in Capital One.
Villa-Garcia: At American Express right now, we have a group chat of over 50 FIU alumni that I put together. When ShellHacks was coming around, I reached out and said, “Hey guys, do you want to volunteer, do you want to help the students?”
I was able to get 10 people to sign up and become mentors.
This event sounds like a massive undertaking. What's the hardest part of ShellHacks to organize?
Hechavarria: The weekend of ShellHacks is actually one of the easiest parts. The most difficult pieces are trying to reach deadlines, getting the venue in order, placing the catering orders, and executing all of the planning. I was sending about 200 emails per week in the months leading up to this year’s ShellHacks.
Wait, so if this event runs over the weekend, where does everyone sleep?
Hechavarria: The hackers are welcome to sleep where they hack. I've seen people just bring sleeping bags, air mattresses, floaties—like pool floaties—to sleep on during the event.
We also provide a few pool floaties here and there too.
AI has really boomed in tech. How central is AI to ShellHacks now?
Villa-Garcia: The very first thing that comes to mind is the number of students that now reach out asking for more AI-related events and activities, workshops. There's much more demand from students wanting to learn these skills, since they're highly sought after.
This year, the title sponsor was Google Cloud ADK/A2A, and they wanted students to build AI agents for the hackathon.
Hechavarria: We do allow starter code and boilerplates, and we encourage students to try troubleshooting with AI, but we prefer them to do the project themselves. AI is a great tool, but it should not be doing your whole project.
It sounds like there is almost a recruiting aspect to this. You are trying to get the best students to come out from FIU and other universities to compete. What goes into that?
Hechavarria: A large part of it is the work we do outside of ShellHacks, which is in INIT. We have tracks that we try to pipeline students leading up to ShellHacks by placing them into different groups.
We first teach students the basics. Then they start making projects. Finally, we give them help with resumes and soft skills. Then they are ready for ShellHacks.
What soft skills do students develop by running this hackathon?
Villa-Garcia: With organizing a hackathon comes the ability to work in a team. Employers want to see someone who can be a team player, work cross-functionally.
When you go into industry as an engineer, you're put in there to work and collaborate with designers, marketing, product, business. The hackathon experience allows the organizers to really do that.
The other one is the ability to communicate and present ideas to different stakeholders. The industry relations team works on raising funds, talking to sponsors, reaching out to them.
And that’s what’s so cool about ShellHacks. This hackathon put many of us on the path to leadership in tech, and so we are happy to come back and help current students.
ShellHacks 2025 Sponsors and Community Partners
