The inaugural hackUMBC hackathon was a smashing success!

Held in the UMBC Skylight Room from 7:00pm Friday to 7:00pm Saturday this past weekend, UMBC’s first-ever hackathon was open to all UMBC students of any skill level, from innovators and explorers to designers and hardcore coders. Its purpose was to allow students to mingle and collaborate for 24 continuous hours of community exploration to grow technology projects from scratch while expanding their connections to other students, industry leaders, and faculty. Admission was free and attracted students from across the UMBC campus community, including CS, CE, EE, IS, Biology, Biotechnology, Math, Physics, and Media Studies.

The term ‘hackathon’ hearkens back to the original meaning of “hacker” and “hacking” in early Internet history — namely, to “hack together (create) something quickly” instead of their current interpretations typically referring to illegal cybersecurity activities.

The theme for hackUMBC 2013 was “Hacking to Improve Campus Life” with the goal of ‘hacking together’ any sort of hardware or software project that helps students, teachers, or schools. Accordingly, projects developed during the event included a textbook resale service, realtime intelligent parking space sensors, Peoplesoft interface refinements, and mobile apps to help UMBC students network, socialize, and monitor class schedules, among many others.

Throughout the event, volunteer mentors from UMBC and local industry circulated amongst the teams to offer advice and guidance on their efforts, including how to successfully ‘pitch’ their products to the judges.

UMBC President Freeman Hrabowski joined the festivities early Friday evening to offer words of encouragement and motivation for the nearly 100 UMBC students competing in this innovative and highly charged event.

hackUMBC was conceived by CSEE students Perry Ogwuche and Randi Williams following their summer experience as fellows at CODE2040. Assisting in the effort was Prajit Kumar Das, CS PhD student and president of UMBC’s ACM chapter, and Alexander Morrow, a senior CS student and president of UMBC’s Cryptocurrency Club. CSEE’s Dr. Rick Forno served as faculty advisor to the event.

Projects were evaluated by several faculty and staff judges based on creativity, technical difficulty, polish, relevance, and usefulness. More than $2500 in prizes were awarded!

Second Place: Erill Labs (Robert Forder, Talmo Pereira, Patrick O’Neill, Sefa Kilic)

Third Place: Clever Source Solutions (Edward Mukasey, Ian Shefferman, Chinonso Ugwu)

hackUMBC Judges: Tim Oates, Rick Forno, Wesley Griffin, Dan Hood, Shawn Lupoli, Valerie Thomas, Geoffrey Weiss, and Ashwinkumar Ganesan.

hackUMBC was sponsored by Northrop Grumman, the UMBC Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, ClearEdge IT Solutions, Independent Security Evaluators, Next Century Corporation, TriTech Systems, Github, CODE2040, the UMBC BWTech Cync Program, and the UMBC Alex Brown Center.

More information can be found at the hackUMBC page.

An industry hopes to make Web-connected gadgets from different makers work well together.

Before you know it, you may be able to connect your “smart” coffeemaker to your “smart” toaster to ensure a properly timed java and bagel.

Extreme Reality announced its partnership with AngelHack for the  Barcelona and Silicon Valley AngelHack Hackthons coming this week.

Name:  Yohka Tanaka

Internship, Co-op or Research Site: Japan International Food for the Hungry

Major(s)/Minor(s): Interdisciplinary Studies

Expected Graduation Year: 2014

Briefly describe your internship, co-op, research, or service- learning opportunity, including your day-to-day tasks, responsibilities, and assignments.

I got my intern site, Japan International Food for the Hungry (JIFH), by typing "npo kiga (meaning "hunger" in Japanese)" in a search box, getting the site's website, and contacting them if they provide an internship opportunity, even though I found on their website saying: "At this time, there are no volunteer opportunities available." I just ignored it and asked them if there are internship opportunities available. The result is: I got an internship opportunity. 

What I'm doing is:
1) Learn about JIFH (what it does, how it works, etc)
2) Inform myself about what has happened in areas where JIFH have supported (9 countries in Africa, 7 countries in Asia, and 1 country in South America).
3) Office work (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, sorting documents), including translation between English and Japanese.
4) Event planning, preparing, and facilitating
5) Summarize information to make a report, which will be read by other NPOs, FAO Japan office, and the Ministry of Foreign Affair (Japan).
At the very beginning, I spent most of my time for learning, and then I've moved on to the next step: JIFH will ask me to write a report, plan/ prepare/ facilitate events, or join meetings for the World Food Day.

What have you enjoyed the most about your position or organization/company?

Specifically, I was so excited at the meeting for the World Food Day. People from FAO Japan, the Ministry of Foreign Affair, Table For Two, Second Harvest Japan, and six other NPOs working on food-related issues came by and talked about what we can do in Japan to support World Food Day. I was just listening to what they said, but it was pleasure to be there and to get their business card.

What have you gained from your experience that you could not have gained from another opportunity?

Face-to-face talk with people whose work is my dream job.

What advice would you give to another student who is seeking an internship or similar experience?

Don't give up. Actively seek an opportunity.

As I described how I got my internship opportunity...
(copied and pasted from the question #1)
I got my intern site, Japan International Food for the Hungry (JIFH), by typing "npo kiga (meaning "hunger" in Japanese)" in a search box, getting the site's website, and contacting them if they provide an internship opportunity, even though I found on their website saying: "At this time, there are no volunteer opportunities available." I just ignored it and asked them if there are internship opportunities available. The result is: I got an internship opportunity. 

How do you see your experience as meaningful? This might involve skills you’ve gained, information you’ve learned, mentors you’ve connected with, or projects you’ve completed.

I want to eradicate hunger. On UMBC campus, I established Table For Two UMBC (Table For Two is a Japanese NPO simultaneously addressing under-nutrition and over-nutrition). My experience as an intern at Japan International Food for the Hungry will directly contribute to my future, which is to establish a NPO to eradicate hunger. I'm feeling how my intern site is operated and connecting with people working at NPOs and the government that are interested in World Food Day. I feel that everything is meaningful.

Please provide a short quote about what you liked most about your position / earning internship credit / the internship placement process / the Shriver Center:

Networking: I could meet people and get their contact information, which will be surely used once I could establish my own non-profit organization.

Name:  Yohka Tanaka

Internship, Co-op or Research Site: Japan International Food for the Hungry

Major(s)/Minor(s): Interdisciplinary Studies

Expected Graduation Year: 2014

Briefly describe your internship, co-op, research, or service- learning opportunity, including your day-to-day tasks, responsibilities, and assignments.

I got my intern site, Japan International Food for the Hungry (JIFH), by typing "npo kiga (meaning "hunger" in Japanese)" in a search box, getting the site's website, and contacting them if they provide an internship opportunity, even though I found on their website saying: "At this time, there are no volunteer opportunities available." I just ignored it and asked them if there are internship opportunities available. The result is: I got an internship opportunity. 

What I'm doing is:
1) Learn about JIFH (what it does, how it works, etc)
2) Inform myself about what has happened in areas where JIFH have supported (9 countries in Africa, 7 countries in Asia, and 1 country in South America).
3) Office work (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, sorting documents), including translation between English and Japanese.
4) Event planning, preparing, and facilitating
5) Summarize information to make a report, which will be read by other NPOs, FAO Japan office, and the Ministry of Foreign Affair (Japan).
At the very beginning, I spent most of my time for learning, and then I've moved on to the next step: JIFH will ask me to write a report, plan/ prepare/ facilitate events, or join meetings for the World Food Day.

What have you enjoyed the most about your position or organization/company?

Specifically, I was so excited at the meeting for the World Food Day. People from FAO Japan, the Ministry of Foreign Affair, Table For Two, Second Harvest Japan, and six other NPOs working on food-related issues came by and talked about what we can do in Japan to support World Food Day. I was just listening to what they said, but it was pleasure to be there and to get their business card.

What have you gained from your experience that you could not have gained from another opportunity?

Face-to-face talk with people whose work is my dream job.

What advice would you give to another student who is seeking an internship or similar experience?

Don't give up. Actively seek an opportunity.

As I described how I got my internship opportunity...
(copied and pasted from the question #1)
I got my intern site, Japan International Food for the Hungry (JIFH), by typing "npo kiga (meaning "hunger" in Japanese)" in a search box, getting the site's website, and contacting them if they provide an internship opportunity, even though I found on their website saying: "At this time, there are no volunteer opportunities available." I just ignored it and asked them if there are internship opportunities available. The result is: I got an internship opportunity. 

How do you see your experience as meaningful? This might involve skills you’ve gained, information you’ve learned, mentors you’ve connected with, or projects you’ve completed.

I want to eradicate hunger. On UMBC campus, I established Table For Two UMBC (Table For Two is a Japanese NPO simultaneously addressing under-nutrition and over-nutrition). My experience as an intern at Japan International Food for the Hungry will directly contribute to my future, which is to establish a NPO to eradicate hunger. I'm feeling how my intern site is operated and connecting with people working at NPOs and the government that are interested in World Food Day. I feel that everything is meaningful.

Please provide a short quote about what you liked most about your position / earning internship credit / the internship placement process / the Shriver Center:

Networking: I could meet people and get their contact information, which will be surely used once I could establish my own non-profit organization.