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From pasta bridges to digital mazes to drone races, Naval Surface Warfare Center, Port Hueneme Division (NSWC PHD)’s workforce displayed its creativity and competitiveness at the command’s third annual Hack 3 gathering on Sept. 3 and 4.
Held at Fathomwerx Lab at the Port of Hueneme, Hack 3 offered participants technology-focused learning activities and problem-solving competitions, some with cash prizes, and all centered on the theme Harness Innovation.
The Hack 3 name stems from the term hackathon, which typically describes a computer coding or “hacking” marathon, held over a one to two-day period, where engineering and technology enthusiasts compete in technical challenges and solve problems individually and in teams.
The concept dovetails with the command’s strategic goal to create a culture of innovation to deliver and sustain capability.
Hack 3 activities included ways to welcome people of all levels of technical know-how, according to Dean Menes, lead organizer and a department manager. He said the gathering’s goal was not so much about applauding the most skilled technical participants as tapping into everyone’s creativity.
“No matter what you do, you have a creative mind,” Menes said. “We want to foster that.”
Fun with problem-solving
NSWC PHD Commanding Officer Capt. Tony Holmes encouraged participants to also think about the innovation theme and how employees can apply what they learn at Hack 3 to their own work and to the broader work of the U.S. Navy.
“Ask questions and have fun, but also think about: ‘Does it solve a problem?’” Holmes told the audience during Hack 3’s opening. “How can it make people’s lives easier?”
The event’s Lock Picking Village illustrated how even a small challenge of picking a lock echoed the theme of harnessing innovation. Would-be lock pickers gathered around a table arrayed with assorted locks and followed instructions on using picking tools to open locks of various difficulty levels.
Menes said the exercise wasn’t about teaching participants how to be criminals, but rather to demonstrate basic cybersecurity principles, such as determining each lock’s vulnerabilities and how to overcome them. Participants can take that knowledge and apply it in their own work, he said.
Other activities also offered ways for participants to express their innovative side. In Game of Drones, teams built fist-size flying drones, then navigated them through a maze.
Other people played the Capture the Flag computer challenge, a mainstay of hackathons, which tested their cybersecurity knowledge with a series of computing, programming language and operating system tasks. Challengers searched for hidden messages in computer coding, decoded data and completed other tasks to win points and move up in the game’s ranking.
SeaPerch challenge for adults
New this year, entrants could participate in the SeaPerch challenge, where teams used engineering skills to build simple, remotely operated underwater vehicles (ROVs) from PVC pipes and tiny battery-run motors. The teams then competed in a timed underwater obstacle course.
The command has offered SeaPerch classes to students for years through its science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) outreach program, but never for adults before, and never for employees, said Ramon Flores, the command’s STEM coordinator, who organized the Hack 3 SeaPerch contest.
Flores said the event followed the same rules as for the students’ version, except that employee teams had only 24 hours to build their ROVs and run the obstacle course, rather than the typical 14-week class for elementary-grade children.
The eventual winning team surprised everyone, including the team members themselves, Flores said, because in the middle of the competition, several people on two teams dropped out, and the remaining competitors formed a new team, rebuilt their ROVs and won, garnering a cash prize of $1,000.
Team member Mahin Alam, an accountant, said he had not expected to win, but was glad for the award.
“I popped my tire on the way here, so I guess I just got it paid for,” Alam said.
Data-minded participants could compete in the digital data challenge of Anything Goes, where teams were handed data sets about weather patterns on Washington state’s Mount Rainier, and gave presentations telling an interesting story using the data.
Evening at the Improv
Other participants competed in the improvisational event Whose Slide Is It Anyways, where each person stood onstage and ad-libbed a presentation from PowerPoint slides that appeared on a monitor next to them.
Artificial intelligence (AI) generated the slides and combined unexpected topics such as the history of the toothbrush with research on black holes. Matt Cole, an electronics engineer, found himself giving a presentation on volcanoes and how to make sandwiches.
When Cole opened the floor to questions, one audience member asked him how to make a volcano sandwich.
“Very carefully,” Cole said. “I recommend tongs.”
Several employees took the stage to give presentations during which each shared an interest or hobby they were knowledgeable about.
Guitars and fleet readiness
Jeff Pendleton, a deputy department manager, demonstrated and spoke on advanced techniques in electric guitar playing. Renee Oats, a mechanical engineer, discussed advancing fleet readiness with digital technologies and used examples from her Ph.D. research.
At a Tabletop Demonstration, Hack 3’s area set aside for employees to display interesting applications of their hobbies, Tairay Skolnick, operations research analyst, demonstrated knitting.
She showed photos of how in the 1960s and early 1970s, NASA managed wires in the Apollo mission space capsules’ guidance systems by knitting them into what it called Core Rope Memory.
Skolnick also invited employees to list their initials on a sheet. She translated the letters into binary code, and using two types of knitting stitches to represent the code, she said she planned to knit the initials into a scarf following the hackathon.
Employees could also try their hand at simple engineering games including building boats from office materials and bridges from dried spaghetti.
Outcomes
Did participants enjoy Hack 3? Khristal Castillo, an administrative officer who also helped organize the activities, said she had fun — especially trying her hand at picking the locks.
Menes said the event went well and he expects even more people to come next year, as this year’s participants spread the word about how fun and useful the event was.
“That’s what really makes it successful,” he said.
| Date Taken: | 11.14.2025 |
| Date Posted: | 11.14.2025 16:25 |
| Story ID: | 551130 |
| Location: | PORT HUENEME, CALIFORNIA, US |
| Web Views: | 175 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Command Employees Display Their Creative Side in Hack 3 Event, by Gail Davis, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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