36-hour hackathon draws 200 participants to Mississauga

A hackathon will bring 200 participants to Mississauga in a time-pressure innovation event this weekend.

BearHacks, a 36-hour hackathon, returns to Sheridan College’s Hazel McCallion Campus in Mississauga from April 24 to 26.

A hackathon is a time-limited event where teams collaborate to build innovative and creative software or hardware. Major League Hacking describes it as “…a creative sprint where you team up to bring a wild idea to life—building anything from a game-changing app to a quirky robot.”

BearHacks encourages participants to build apps, websites, hardware hacks or games.

“We encourage creativity,” BearHacks director and Sheridan student Imran Yafith told INsauga.com. The theme will be announced during the opening ceremony.

In addition to the fun of creating something new, the event is also an opportunity to network, Yafith said.

“The job market isn’t great right now,” Yafith said. “Finding an internship and even a new grad role is extremely difficult right now.”

Yafith said he and his co-director Taimoor Aleem have just finished degrees in computer science at Sheridan and they have seen how the job market has changed.

“We have seen the effects of the rise of AI and COVID and what it did to the industry,” he said.

Companies are still figuring out what they want to do with AI. But Yafith and Aleem said they both found internships through networking.

Last year, a recruiter from Scotiabank came to BearHacks and met with a lot of students. As a result, several students got summer jobs at Scotiabank, he said.

“We are looking to keep that going,” he said.

They have more recruiters attending this year.

Participants in the 2025 BearHacks event. Photo: BearHacks

In a tough job market, students are jumping at the opportunity to participate.

This year, BearHacks had over 750 people apply, and they had to narrow it down to around 200 people because of the venue capacity. Around 55 per cent of participants are Sheridan students.

There are over $7,000 in prizes for the winning projects.

“We have some really huge prizes that we are giving out this year,” said Aleem. “We are super excited.”

The participants have 36 hours to complete their projects, and they can sleep at the school. Some participants may choose to forgo sleep and continue working on their project.

“It depends on how much caffeine they have in their system,” said Yafith.

In addition to the competition, participants can attend workshops on topics such as pitching or networking and join activities such as poker, karaoke and ping pong.

There are over 20 judges, including working professionals, professors and interns.

This year, they are partnering with Major League Hacking, a global hackathon league. MLH will bring a hardware lab with micro-computers, controllers and other items that the participants can borrow during the event to work on projects, Yafith said.

This is the second year Sheridan has held a hackathon. The University of Toronto Mississauga also hosts a hackathon called DeerHacks.

BearHacks is free to attend. They provide meals, drinks, snacks, swag and sleeping rooms.

The winners will be announced on the BearHacks Instagram.

More information, a list of prizes, the judges and sponsors can be found here.

 

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Lead photo: Mikhail Nilov