Ryan Endacott

When I began at my university, there was no hacker culture. There was an Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) group, but it was very inactive. My freshman year, I decided to run for president to try and create a fun programming culture. I was elected, and the other officers and I launched a revamp of the organization to encourage involvement in side projects and create a passionate community of coders at the University of Missouri. We held a series of workshops on web development and other topics and average meeting attendance increased from 20 to 50, which is sustained to this day. We also held my university's first hackathon, HackMizzou (hackmizzou.com)! It's been amazing to see the growth of such an awesome culture at my university.