Hacker Poets, Shawarmas, Mansion Coders, and NoSQL Injections
A Hockey Arena Packed with Hacker Poets
From Pearson International Airport:
Take Highway 427 south
Exit at Highway 401 west
Exit at 278 to Highway 8 west
Exit at Highway 85 to Waterloo
Exit at University Avenue west
These are the instructions that should take you to the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo, located at 200 University Avenue West.
I don't know if it's something in the water, the air, or just brilliant marketing from students at Waterloo, UofT, McGill, and others across Canada – but something is clear: there's a significant talent wave permeating through Canada that simply cannot be ignored.
Take Socratica for example, a collective out of the University of Waterloo bringing together makers, artists, engineers, designers, writers, poets, and everyone in-between to work and share stuff together in-real-life. Their Symposium on March 19 was nothing short of magical. The student-led event was hosted in a hockey arena, brought together over 2,000 people, showcased more than 60 projects, and had Live Nation-caliber production, including Shawarmas from ShawermaPlus.
But how can this be? After all, aren't these just students? — That's exactly the point.
These "students" truly embody the word. What I mean is that they study the world around them and seem to view "impossible" as just another puzzle to be solved. Whether it's science, poetry, transistors, machine learning, or robotics, they don't care where the lines are supposed to be – I can't wait for the documentary to drop.
Next Gen Semantic Search and Predictive Models at a Mansion
Two days later we had Dreamwell's AI hackathon. Someone called it "The Hack for Titans" given that half the participants had already won other hackathons in the last six months.
Picture a mansion, music playing, engineers hunched over laptops, building stuff that wasn't just clever, but useful and at the edge of semantic search and predictive algorithms. Participants competed one-on-one for a $5,000 prize and a shot at a Founding Engineer role with Dreamwell AI.
The result? These engineers built apps that were technically audacious, creative, and yet practical for brands to use in their day-to-day.
NoSQL Injections, Robotics, and Frontier Models
The momentum continued the very next day with the University of Toronto's "GenAI Genesis 2025" hackathon, which aimed to be the largest AI-focused hackathon in Canada. The event gained unexpected attention earlier in the week when a student hacker detailed how they exploited a Firebase misconfiguration which essentially allowed them to grant themselves admission to the event, documenting the feat on Hacker News.
The post went viral, and suddenly Genesis wasn't just big; it was trending in SF, Boston, and NYC. This wasn't cheating (maybe?); it was resourcefulness, the kind of thinking that turns a locked door into an invitation. While this incident raised concerns about security, it also inadvertently amplified the hackathon's visibility within the broader tech community. The hackathon hummed with energy—hundreds of minds racing to build AI that didn't just function but sang, all along the storied stretch of University Avenue.
Let it Rip
Step back, and you see a pattern emerging—a culture of builders that don’t know where science ends and poetry begins. These students don't care that painting and transistors don't generally mix—they mash them together anyway, and it works. Dreamwell's Hacker Titans don't flinch at complexity; they revel in it, turning chaos into practical tools. And that Genesis hacker? He didn't see a barrier; he saw a challenge worth cracking. And he ended up participating in the event!
Here's the thing: creativity and execution aren't magic. They're just what happens when you operate from a place of wonder, curiosity, and ambition. These students don't have some secret sauce—they've just skipped the part where you're supposed to doubt yourself. Most of us get that beaten into us eventually.
They haven't yet, and I hope they never do.