20 Teams, 100 hackers, 20 coaches, 5 judges, and countless volunteers.
It was a record turnout for Palm Beach Tech’s 4th hackathon, and a great opportunity for the local tech community to come together to solve community problems while flexing their creative muscles. The hackathon was hosted by Office Depot, and sponsored by FPL, the City of Boca Raton and two-dozen other South Florida companies and education partners.
Andy Parry
“All teams created truly innovate solutions. I was truly inspired by the way these teams, whose members did not know each other, came together, committed on a problem to help the community and collectively worked through 24 hours to build and demonstrate a fully working solution,” said Andrew Parry, VP of IT for Office Depot.
After a Friday night kickoff party that included some inspiring tech pep talks and an intense game of Rock Paper Scissors, teams formed they begin serious ideation around the white boards Saturday morning. During the 24-hour development period, the 20 teams ditched sleep in favor of Candid Coffee, pizza, endless M&Ms and the well-stocked snack table in order to build and code something great for the community. On Sunday the teams presented solutions to top judges from Levatas, PGA, Microsoft, Modernizing Medicine and Office Depot.
This year the theme was particularly timely, as the hackathon was held during Hurricane Season and came on the heels of the devastating impact of Hurricane Dorian in the Bahamas.
“All of the team projects related to either smart cities or hurricane relief, with the winning projects actually supporting the latter,” said Joe Russo, President and CEO of Palm Beach Tech.
Pedro Moras
Several teams focused their efforts on ideas benefitting the City of Boca Raton and surrounding communities.
“It was so inspiring to see our diverse tech community come together and use their talents to build awesome solutions that will improve our community,” added Pedro Moras, Innovation Strategist for the City of Boca Raton.
And the winners are – drum roll please …
First place, $2.500 prize: Hurricane Helper
Hurricane Helper’s progressive AWS based web application is called EDNA – Emergency Disaster Network Application. EDNA is an online platform that streamlines disaster management by using a national volunteer network in a cloud call center. See Presentation
Team Members: Derek Donev, Erik White, Mike Tobin, Michael Roth, Ivan Bliskavka, Holden Gibler, Taylor Gagne, Alex Ciccolella.
Second Place, $1,000 Prize: Hurricane Hackers
This team’s app was part-registry, part-donation center known as ReAll – standing for Resource Allocation. As a storm is approaching, people can see and compile a list of what they need. After a storm, people can use the app as a donation center, as they can donate items or money for hurricane relief. See Presentation
Team Members: Shawn Genoway, Charles Richardson, Tim Richardson, Jahnoah Simpson, Joel Ryan Martin
Third Place, $500 Prize: Self Healing
Self Healing solution uses Mesh Technology to improve post hurricane communication when cell phone communications are often unavailable. See Presentation
Team Member: Talal Gedeon
The full and final scoring can be found for a short time by using this link: Click Here