Meet a Postman Student Leader and Her 10-Day Hackathon

Meet Kajal Hake, an accomplished Postman Student Leader. In this special Q&A, Kajal shares how she organized an incredible 10-day student hackathon, how it impacted participants, and her advice for current and future Postman Student Leaders.

Name: Kajal Hake
Postman Student Leader: Since 2020
School: Usha Mittal Institute of Technology, SNDT Women’s University
Year: Final year
Degree: BTech in Computer Science and Technology.
Internships: Currently a supply-chain intern at Colgate-Palmolive

You’re very active in the student community. What do student communities mean to you?
Communities have always played an important role in shaping my career. They’ve helped me grow and develop in various aspects. I’ve been part of various communities since my second year of college and it’s always been fun interacting with tech enthusiasts on my campus and in my local community. In fact, I recently collaborated with fellow technical communities on my campus and organized a 10-day hackathon.

Tell us more about the 10-day student hackathon you led.
This was a collaborative hackathon that I organized, along with all the technical councils of Usha Mittal Institute of Technology (WIE, ACM, CSI, CodeChef, IEEE, GDSC, and E-Cell Councils) from January 30 to February 10, 2022. It was called: We-Accinge (W-Accinge). It was an amazing experience, filled with learning, sharing, and collaboration. The hackathon was led by the women leaders of these technical societies to give opportunities to student developers and to build a healthy environment where students can come together, collaborate with their peers, and turn their ideas into reality with the help of brainstorming sessions, workshops on various domains, and our amazing mentors.

W-Accinge was planned and executed with the support of Postman, Devfolio, Polygon, and other organizations. We had judges and mentors from Barclays, Deutsche Bank, Oracle, JP Morgan Chase & Co, Colgate-Palmolive, Disney+Hotstar, and Fiserv.

Along with the hackathon marathon happening among the participants, we also discovered that many of the students were beginners in tech domains, and for many of them, it was their very first hackathon. They needed guidance and mentorship to participate, learn, and build. Considering that, we conducted interactive sessions and workshops.

How did the participants use APIs and collaborate together during the hackathon?
As the Postman Student Leader from my campus, I’m an advocate of API literacy, hence I also encouraged students to learn about APIs and learn how one can leverage them to build awesome projects and collaborate with their teammates using Postman. I shared about the Postman Student Expert Certification and they were amazed to know the benefits of this program and how it provided an incredible learning experience to the students who are API enthusiasts. I’m glad to share that we got more than 80 students certified as Postman Student Experts from my campus within the duration of the event. I educated these students about how being a Postman Student Expert will give them a ton of amazing opportunities and access to Postman resources, including the Postman Student Discord server.

Throughout the duration of the hackathon, we also discovered that more than 100 students used Postman’s collaborative workspace for their projects and it resulted in creating over 120 new public workspaces!

What was it like to execute an event of such magnitude?
It’s really satisfying to help other tech enthusiasts learn the skills that will help them reach their goals. And I’m really thankful to Postman for providing me with such a platform where I’m able to help students to excel in their field of interest. This so far has been one of the greatest achievements for me as a Postman Student Leader.

I love how the Postman Student Leader program specifically focuses on empowering students like me to promote API literacy amongst their peers and enabling them to explore the API space.

What advice do you have for other Postman Student Leaders or students who are thinking of applying to become a Student Leader?
Try attending as many summits, hackathons, and meet-ups as possible because you’ll get to learn a lot and meet these amazing like-minded tech enthusiasts.

As a Postman Student Leader, you will receive a ton of amazing opportunities and access to Postman resources, so I suggest making the best use of them! You will also get a chance to organize multiple events on your campus, which I feel is the very crucial phase of this program; you get to be the face of Postman at your respective campuses and educate students about APIs.

How you can get involved with Postman Student Programs

• Interested in becoming a Postman Student Leader? The first step is applying to be a Postman Student Expert here.
• Already a Postman Student Expert? Become a Postman Student Leader by applying here.
• Are you an educator? Learn about our Postman Classroom Program for educators here.