We Built the First Hackathon ACSS-UPLB Ever Held

The Innovation Lab didn’t exist before us. No template, no precedent, no senior who’d done it before we could ask. Just a team that decided to figure it out.

I came in as an event head wanting to grow. What I underestimated was how much there was to actually carry.

Twenty teams submitted their prototypes. Five made it to the culmination event on March 7. Getting to that day meant months of planning and logistics, and more than a few nights where I genuinely felt sick thinking about it all falling apart. A first-ever event is already a gamble — you’re not just executing something, you’re proving it’s worth existing. Every snag felt heavier than it probably should have because the stakes felt personal.

So I did what I could: stayed behind the scenes, pulled whatever strings I could pull, tried to make things a little easier for everyone else doing the same.

The funny thing about leadership is that the theory is clean — servant leadership, professional excellence, all of it sounds manageable until you’re actually in it. Ang bigat talaga. But watching those five teams present on dday, seeing everything come together — it was hard to remember why I was so anxious in the first place.

We pulled it off. ACSS-UPLB’s first ever hackathon, start to finish. And it worked.
I’m proud of what we built. More than that, I’m grateful for who I built it with. The team carried this thing as much as I did, probably more.

Maraming salamat, TIL team. We made history, in the most lowkey way possible. 🤝