AT&T Hudson Valley Youth Hack
Themes: Education leading to Employability. Professional Sustainability
October 12, 2019
Mount Saint Mary College, Newburgh NY
Thank you everyone for joining the inaugural AT&T Hudson Valley Youth Hackathon!
It was exciting to see 100+ professionals working side by side with youth, and competing equally. We appreciate our partner, AT&T, who lobbied with vigor to have kids involved more than we initially envisioned - it was amazingly inspirational and a learning experience for all! We discovered that our high schoolers are way more tech savvy than previous generations. They are thoughtful, engaged and capable. The startup bug bit them at the Hackathon - we can expect more tech entrepreneurs coming... Let's cultivate this spirit!
The Hackathon revealed how the youth are driven to solve Hudson Valley employability and professional sustainability challenges. We were excited to see that we are all aligned in our dream of making the Hudson Valley a better place to live and work, and leveraging technology as a practical tool for this rising tide!
120 people participated at the Hackathon - volunteering, brainstorming, researching, creating, designing, coding. We appreciate our volunteers from DocuWare, Technically Creative and IBM, they were inspired and moved working with our amazing teams. We are happy to report some participants got job offers right after the Hackathon!
Thanks yo our sponsors - we got great prizes, swags, food and t-shirts for all participants!
Eight amazing teams presented their projects, and we are happy to announce the winners:
- 1st place - Israel Pagan and Kevin Leto from Newburgh Free Academy, PTECH. Project: research on Public Transportation challenge for Newburgh, NY.
- 2nd place - Michael Coney, Mahassin Poree-EL. Jordan Christie, Luke Greave, Brandon Weygant. Project: EngineerU.
- 3rd place - Anthony Grice, Morgan Stroud, Zachary Sheehan (Newburgh Free Academy, PTECH), Jazmin Pyle (Newburgh Girls Code Club). Project: fighting pollution in the Hudson Valley, NY.
- Special prize from 1Ci - Cheryl Schneider, Dominick Piaquadio, Ricky Lau, Steven Cina, Rahul Joseph. Project: TechDojo, matching developers with learning resources.
Go to the Hudson Valley Tech Festival & Hackathon gallery to congratulate the winners and check out all of the awesome submissions. Check photos on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HVTechFest/
Join us for the First Annual Hudson Valley Tech Festival Hackathon and apply your creative thinking, problem solving and basic technical skills to help create new employment opportunities and even better quality of life in our region.
Participants will engage in brainstorming and rapid “virtual” prototyping. Over a few short hours, your team based hard work will be validated by available mentors to help prepare you to pitch your “hack” to our panel of judges. A variety of awards will be provided based on how well each entry presents an underlying issue, the problem it creates, how you will solve the problem and the value your solution provides to our community.
What to Expect
The 2019 hackathon is a 7-hour brainstorming and idea-development competition to solve critical regional issues such as:
- Declining higher education student enrollment
- Disconnect between college programs and workforce skill requirements
- Limited local continuing education opportunities
- Retention of top talent and students in our region
Do you have an idea? Educators, students, designers, developers, social workers, business specialists, and anyone else interested in developing solutions are encouraged to join us for this fantastic event!
Schedule
8:30am | Doors open, Coffee |
9:00-9:30 am | Opening Ceremony: Dr. Jason N. Adsit, Mount Saint Mary College President, HVTechFest leaders |
10:30 | Hackathon kick-off |
10:30-11:30am | Pitchfest (60 sec/Pitch) & Team Development |
11:30-3:30 | ‘Building Time’. Over a few short hours, your team based hard work will be validated by available mentors to help prepare you to pitch your “hack” to our panel of judges. |
12:00 | Lunch - Enjoy lunch with fellow Festival participants. Lunch sponsor - MidHudson Federal Credit Union |
11:00-3:00 | Consultations with Mentors |
12:30-2:00 | Coding Classes with VidCode founder Leandra Tejedor |
10:00-2:00 | Capture the Flag - Joe Cupano - out of the Hackathon flow |
3:30 | Submit your project! Demo Intro, Welcome Judges |
4:00-5:00 | Presentations, Judging & Celebration |
5-5:30 | Closing Ceremony |