HackPrinceton
Princeton's flagship student hackathon. Kevin's relationship with it spans three roles: high-school competitor, Princeton organizer/lead developer, and Dedalus Labs sponsor/operator.
What HackPrinceton Is
HackPrinceton is Princeton University's flagship student hackathon, drawing hundreds of students for intensive build sprints. It is run by a student organizing committee and funded by corporate sponsors. Kevin's project graph treats HackPrinceton as an event-operations system, not only a club: event brand, seasonal landing pages, applicant surfaces, judging logistics, sponsor operations, and live event execution all connect here.
| Phase | When | Kevin's role | Project evidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Competitor | High school | Part of a 13-hackathon winning streak | Hackathon Projects |
| Organizer / lead developer | 2024-2025 | Built HackPrinceton seasonal sites and helped run the event | PortfolioMon HackPrinceton cards; GitHub website repos |
| Sponsor | Fall 2025, Spring 2026 | Represented Dedalus Labs, mentored teams, presented Dedalus Machines | User LinkedIn post; Dedalus Labs |
Source: User LinkedIn post, 2026-04-22; Resume, Kevin B. Liu; raw/sites/kevinliu-biz-2026-07-01/portfolio-projects.json
Seasonal Site Evidence
The PortfolioMon scrape shows three HackPrinceton website cards. These should be folded into this parent page, because each seasonal site is evidence of the same event-ops ownership surface.
| Season | Site | Repo | Screenshot | PortfolioMon evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fall 2024 | https://hack-princeton-fall-2024-demo.vercel.app/ | HackPrinceton-Demo-Fall-2024 |  |
First HackPrinceton site Kevin built as lead developer; established the design template used for future seasons. |
| Spring 2025 | https://hack-princeton-spring-2025-demo.vercel.app/ | HackPrinceton-Demo-Spring-2025 |  |
Responsive site with animated sections, hackathon branding components, and application-portal integration. |
| Fall 2025 | https://hack-princeton-fall-2025-demo.vercel.app/ | HackPrinceton-Demo-Fall-2025 |  |
Lead-developer landing page with animated hero, schedule timelines, sponsor carousel, and custom applicant portal. |
Website and Tooling Family
Kevin's HackPrinceton software work is a small event stack: marketing surfaces, templates, application/demo pages, and judging logistics. Podium is the standalone judging control plane; seasonal website repos stay folded here.
| Repo / page | Role | Deployment | Page decision |
|---|---|---|---|
| HackPrinceton-Demo-Fall-2024 | Fall 2024 demo website | https://hack-princeton-demo.vercel.app | Fold into this page |
| HackPrinceton-Landing-Page | Spring 2025 landing page | https://hackprinceton-wheat.vercel.app | Fold into this page |
| HackPrinceton-Demo-Spring-2025 | Spring 2025 demo website | https://hack-princeton-spring-2025-demo.vercel.app | Fold into this page |
| HackPrinceton-Demo-Fall-2025 | Fall 2025 demo website | https://hack-princeton-fall-2025-demo.vercel.app/ | Fold into this page |
| HackPrinceton-Landing-Page-Template | Reusable landing-page template | https://hackprinceton-template.vercel.app/ | Fold into this page |
| Podium | Judging coordinator for large-scale hackathons | https://hackprinceton-podium.vercel.app/ | Standalone page because it is a reusable operations product |
Source: raw/github/kevin-repos-2026-07-01.json; Podium
Dedalus Sponsor Arc
As a Dedalus sponsor, Kevin gave the opening and closing talks, presented Dedalus Machines to a packed lecture hall, mentored teams at the Dedalus booth, and helped turn a company platform into a hackathon primitive. Students built agentic workflows on Dedalus Machines in 36 hours using an API key and new docs, including projects the Dedalus team had not imagined. The forward-deployed detail matters: Kevin sat beside hackers while they debugged, saw where the product and docs failed in real time, and carried those lessons back into the company. This is the cleanest full-circle arc: hackathon competitor -> Princeton organizer -> startup sponsor/operator. Source: User reflection, 2026-07-20; Kevin's HackPrinceton reflection
People Connections
Several wiki person pages reference HackPrinceton:
- Mark Rubin, Riya Pawar, Ray Kong, Caleb Kha-Uong - HackPrinceton-tagged peers
- People Network Ledger, People Network Ledger, Simon Kupchik - HackPrinceton orbit
- People Network Ledger, David Liu (Princeton), Athan Zhang - broader Princeton-adjacent context
Filing Rule
Do not create separate longform pages for HackPrinceton seasonal landing pages unless one becomes independently important. Add new seasons here, update Podium for judging/control-plane work, and use Project Inventory Ledger for the raw repo inventory.
Timeline
- 2026-07-20 | Added Kevin's opening/closing talks and forward-deployed debugging story, with the direct LinkedIn post for the full-circle sponsor reflection. Source: User reflection, 2026-07-20; Kevin LinkedIn post
- 2024-10-14 | HackPrinceton-Demo-Fall-2024 repo created. Source: raw/github/kevin-repos-2026-07-01.json
- 2025-01-21 | HackPrinceton-Demo-Spring-2025 repo created. Source: raw/github/kevin-repos-2026-07-01.json
- 2025-03 | Kevin organized HackPrinceton Spring 2025. Source: Resume, Kevin B. Liu
- 2025-04-28 | HackPrinceton-Landing-Page repo created for the Spring 2025 landing surface. Source: raw/github/kevin-repos-2026-07-01.json
- 2025-07-16 | HackPrinceton-Demo-Fall-2025 repo created. Source: raw/github/kevin-repos-2026-07-01.json
- 2025-10 | Dedalus Labs first sponsored HackPrinceton. Source: User LinkedIn post, 2026-04-22
- 2026-04-18 | Dedalus Labs sponsored HackPrinceton Spring 2026. Kevin presented Dedalus Machines, mentored teams, and published the full-circle reflection. Source: User LinkedIn post, 2026-04-22
- 2026-04-22 | Wiki page created. Source: agent, 2026-04-22
- 2026-06-25 | Added HackPrinceton website/tooling map and linked Podium as the judging control plane. Source: User request, 2026-06-25; raw/github/kevin-repos-2026-06-25.json
- 2026-07-01 | Rebuilt the page around the current PortfolioMon cards, live GitHub repo inventory, screenshot assets, and the fold-into-parent decision for seasonal HackPrinceton sites. Source: User request, 2026-07-01; raw/sites/kevinliu-biz-2026-07-01/portfolio-projects.json; raw/github/kevin-repos-2026-07-01.json