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RMI Hackathon

What is a Hackathon?

“A hackathon, a hacker neologism, is an event when programmers meet to do collaborative computer programming.” 

 Sounds scary, right? Don’t worry, it’s not that type of hacking.


Over the past year, hackathons have taken the country by storm. You might have even seen a small one in “The Social Network.” No, we don’t break into your school’s computers. Yes, we do have a good time while hacking.

The Retail Management Institute at Santa Clara University has started hosting a Digital Marketing and Retailing Hackathon twice a year.  

The purpose of the Hack-a-thon is to create a center of excellence that brings thought leaders from academia and industry to 

  • Collaborate on (hack) digital marketing and retailing topics that are of mutual interest

  • Exchange ideas about leading edge research in academia and industry

  • Create a curriculum both at the undergraduate level, graduate level and executive certification level that can expand the talent pool of highly qualified digital marketing professionals.

While these objectives will provide the 'guard rails' within which the hack-a-thon will operate, we will keep the topic areas quite fluid so that we can capture the rapid dynamics of this industry.