Innovation Track Options

This year’s hackathon is about exploring how knowledge is connected. Teams will use Wikipedia like a giant map of information. Each topic is like a point on the map, and links between topics show how ideas, people, places, events, and discoveries are connected.

Teams will choose one of three project tracks.

1. Where Did It Start? — Origin Tracking

This track is about finding where an idea, event, invention, or topic may have started.

Your team will choose a topic and follow the links backward to find the people, events, discoveries, or ideas that helped create it. The goal is to explain the “origin story” of a topic using data and connected information.

Think of it like asking:

• Where did this idea come from?
• What had to happen first?
• Who or what influenced it?

Marvel Example: This is like tracing how the Avengers came together. Instead of only starting with the first Avengers movie, you would look backward at Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, S.H.I.E.L.D., the Tesseract, and Loki to explain what events made the Avengers possible.

2. What’s Next? — Future Event Predictor

This track is about using past patterns to make a smart prediction about what could happen next.

Your team will study how a topic has changed over time. You might look at connected ideas, important events, repeated patterns, or new words that are becoming more important. Then your team will make a prediction about what might happen next and explain why.

Think of it like asking:

• What patterns do we see?
• What seems to be growing or changing?
• What might happen next based on the past?

Marvel Example: This is like watching the early MCU movies and predicting that a major villain like Thanos would eventually become important. You would notice clues like the Infinity Stones appearing in different stories and use those clues to predict a bigger future event.

3. What If? — Alternative Timeline Analyzer

This track is about imagining how things might have changed if one important event happened differently.

Your team will choose a goal or outcome and study what events, people, tools, or ideas were needed to make it happen. Then you will explore what might change if one of those key pieces was missing or different.

Think of it like asking:

• What if this event did not happen?
• What would need to change to get a different result?
• What blocked a better outcome from happening?

Marvel Example: This is like asking, “What if Tony Stark never became Iron Man?” Your team would explore what events might change after that. Would the Avengers still form? Would S.H.I.E.L.D. find another leader? Would Earth be ready for Loki or Thanos? The goal is to explain what changes and why.

Quick Track Summary

• Where Did It Start? Find the origin story of a topic.
• What’s Next? Use past patterns to predict what may happen next.
• What If? Explore how the future could change if one important event were different.