Hello everyone, I am Frank Calas. The last thing I would want is for you to see my posts and immediately disqualify me as a legitimate source of information/entertainment/quality content, so allow me to introduce myself.

This is me

I am the one on the right, and I am a student. I have been a hacking fanatic ever since September 13th, 2015. That was the end of my first hackathon MHacks 6, but I am getting ahead of myself.

One day in the beginning of my second year of college I was approached by my sister, Vanessa. She was somehow persuaded to go to some cool tech event near Detroit (mind you we live in Florida) and she was thrilled to tell me all about it. As she spoke, it almost seemed as though she couldn’t collect and reproduce a full and coherent story before trying to spring into the next one with vigor. She was ecstatic. Looking back I really only have her to thank because, sure enough, after some convincing (more than I would like to admit) I agreed to go to the next one. That event was MHacks and I truly had no idea what I was about to get myself into.


I grew up as the younger sibling, second to my sister. We had a modest upbringing and owe everything we have to our dear loving parents. My mother, Maria, immigrated here from Colombia to learn on a student visa; She worked as a lab technician when I was young; She tells me that after my sister was born she had to work two jobs just to make ends meet. I cannot confirm or deny this but I like to believe she hasn’t led some kind of secret life before I came into the picture. She grew up with three sisters and two brothers in a very small and charming town called Duitama. My father, Francisco (his name, not mine), immigrated here from Cuba, as an effort to improve his, and his family’s life. He has always had a knack for messing with cars and fixing/building homes. I like to believe that had be been given the opportunity I have (being brought up in middle-class America) he could have been a rather successful architect. He grew up in a house with 5 brothers, somewhere in the middle. They met (each other and most of their best friends) while attending a beginners English class. They both came to this country with nothing and have truly made something of it. They have raised two children and run a business.


By now I am sure you must be asking yourself why I just told you about my parents personal development, and I will tell you soon enough but first I have to talk about my sister, Vanessa. If you were to look up some psychological paper on the traits of first born children, I am sure they would describe Vanessa very well. She grew up playing piano and excelling in her classes. She graduated from the University of Florida in 2014 with a degree in Public Relations, and she has been excessively active in the start up community since her first internship at grooveshark. She has always been interested in politics and is precisely equip for long and thought-intensive conversations. She has always helped me when she can and has, for the most part, never led me astray.


The reason you need to know about my family is to have a better understanding of who I am. Without a sense of my origins how can I hope to get your validation? It would be like watching The Mighty Ducks, except starting at the part where Gordon Bombay (the ex hockey player-turned lawyer) decides to give the kids on the team (he legally has to coach) a chance but they aren’t convinced he is going to be a worth-while coach. The problem is there is no perspective, and therefore nay audience can’t get behind a character without proper origins. I hope everything I said will help you extrapolate information that I am not going to explicitly say, just as watching the beginning of The Mighty Ducks helps you understand why it is so difficult for the kids to trust Gordon, or why he would be untrustworthy at all.


I grew up in a middle American household, with strong family values and a lot of Spanish. Growing up I always knew I wanted to do something with math, because that was what I was good at; The older I became, and the better I did in school, the more I would like the sound of studying engineering. So I am currently a mechanical engineering student at Florida Polytechnic University (but that’s a story for another day). I enjoy engineering matters like design, and all the complicated physics that goes into materials, such as crystal lattices and Gibbs Free Energy diagrams. The only problem with all this is it doesn’t explain my fascination with hacking, and more specifically, hackathons. Well it all goes back to that first hackathon I went to in September of 2015. That was where it all began. I caught the hacker bug and I haven’t lost it since.