A Hackathon is a sprint-like event for a group of programmers to work together on a collaborative project in a short period of time. Companies such as Facebook and Google host annual Hackathons to promote creative thinking and innovation, and these events often lead to surprising, novel concepts and prototypes.
From our past experiences, a typical hackathon is inaccessible for many beginners. We attended a hackathon called Openhack in April last year, in which we felt a bit disconnected. The other participants were simply a lot better than us; the event itself, as well, wasn't very inclusive and engaging. In that light, we decided to host a hackathon of our own, to promote the field of STEM to all levels of participants.
To enhance our participants' Hackathon experience, we decided to invite guest speakers to discuss their experience in the industry.
Mr. Obonguta Felix
Felix is currently a doctoral student at Kyoto University majoring in civil engineering. His research interests include infrastructure asset management, transportation, urban planning and the application of data science and artificial intelligence to infrastructure monitoring.
Mr. Roddy McNeil
I have been coding for over 30 years across a lot of industries, have taught video game development, and am currently working with a small business that has a platform for anaesthetists and surgeons. Fun fact: I made a VR game for PAX Australia, including a full-sized controller (or that I once played Sheep in Space for 24 hours when I was a teenager).
Mr. Steve Sabat
I've been working with computer science in a professional capacity since the early 2000's. I started out as a Sysadmin and network manager at a small aircraft manufacturing plant in a little town in Wyoming, USA. I began working in schools in 2006 as a support technician and database manager. I enjoy working in schools because the IT environment is always changing and is open to innovation. I'm currently the ICT Manager at the Anglo-American School of Sofia, in Bulgaria. Fun fact about me: I used to be a ski instructor at Park City, Utah. Having worked in international schools in Europe for the past 9 years, I've been involved with data privacy, security and GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) compliance. Many other countries outside of Europe (including Japan) are adopting data privacy laws based upon the GDPR principles.
If you have ever attended a Hackathon, then you must know the website Devpost, a platform for both hosts and participants to launch hackathons, submit projects, share projects, and more. We decided to make embed those features in our website and make a Devpost clone. :D
Three months of coding, 87 Github commits, 14167 lines of code - this website has been our biggest project. The basis of this seamless workflow between the frontend and backend was Git collaboration. We began using branches, which enabled us to effectively manage different tasks and deploy the web app without pushing unfinished parts. We even encountered a huge git conflict, in which the main branch was mysteriously behind one of the other branches and took us over two days to resolve. But overall, we became significantly better at using git, a skill that will definitely be handy later in our careers.
Pandemic Simulator
This is an epidemic simulator that users can use by setting the parameters to whatever they want. Some parameters show to be much more effective than others (such as social distancing), while others completely wipe out the population at extreme rates
Focus Detective System
This software detects two major types of distraction: Fatigue and Off-job. Fatigue means the tiredness of students in front of screen. They will show yawn, nod-off for snooze, or frequent wink because of tiredness on their facial expression.
Corona labs
Make a factory to produce vaccines! Save the world from pandemics! It's all yours! In corona labs, you get to make a factory, upgrade your vaccines, build conveyor belts, support developing countries and more!
