hackathon

ICIMS Halloween Hackathon Live Blog

By Paul B. Kaiser on October 25, 2018

09.48

And thats it. I like the NY Apple event. Good vibes.

And now songs from Lana del Ray

IOS12.1 is shipping today with group chat

Order today and get it next week

This is cool. The Pencil is magnetic and clips to the top of the iPad and then charges.

USB-C around the house for Apple

Comes with Face ID and cool things at the top

Same size but bigger screen

The NEW iPad Pro

Bring on the iPad

New Apple stores look amazing!

Order today – get it next week

Now for the new Mac Mini

Starts at 99 and you can order today. Available Nov. 7

Nice colors as usual

It’s Purty

Smaller better faster

The New MacBook Air

The Old MacBook Air

100 Million Macs – wow

They will start with the Macs

They love NY

How about them Apples?

Cool apples

21.11

Hi folks. Left a little early form the Hackthon so I wish the rest of the hackers good luck on the competition.

A really great event – well organized. Look forward to the next one.

15.46

Get your audience game on for Ted Talks tips

Workshop: How to Hack a TED Talk, sponsored by TEDxAsburyPark Always wanted to give a TED Talk or just feel more confident with your public speaking skills? Come and learn how with Public Speaking Coach/TEDxAsburyPark Curator and Rehearsal Director, MK Harby and author/TEDx Speaker, Olive Persimmon. You’ll learn tips for finding your message, how to audition, and tools for connecting with your audience.

Do you have an objective? as a speaker? as a person?

Do these things to become Ted:

Breath
Eye contact
Smile
Strong opening hook
Tell a story
Annunciate
Speech tempo (slow it down)
Tone
Make it relatable
Talk to the audience not the slides
Sound credible
Teach them something new
Be convincing to the audience and yourself
Trigger curiosity
Have a call to action

How to become a Ted speaker – Get recruited or audition to become a Ted Talker.

“Rewrite your story” is the story today.

13.28

This was a pirate led presentation.

Cloud AWS Hardware Hacks,
Presented by Jeremy Wallace, Solutions Architect, AWS

This session will be cloudy with a chance of IoT-storms! Join Amazon Web Services for a lesson on the Internet of Things and its design patterns on the cloud. Once we’ve covered the basics, Jeremy will show you how to run an AWS green grass enabled application on a raspberry pi.

12.19

Halloween costumes. 3rd Place baby!

12.03

What hackers eat for lunch. Thanks Livoti’s.

11.40

Workshop: Intro to Chatbots – Peter Hagelund

Come chat about chatbots! This session will serve as an introduction to the major concepts of chatbots, including intents, utterances, slots and prompts and provide a walk-through of what is required to build a bot using Amazon Lex with serverless business logic implemented in Python.

Points of interest:

Bots
- personal assistants
- support and help
- virtual staff
- Google home and Alexa
Building the Bot
- AWS Lex – 3 parts
  - Transcribe – Lex – Polly
- INTENT what is your intent from the chatbot?
- SLOT what is the variable you want to set?
- UTTERANCE Identify the intent
- PROMPT request of your input
- FULLFILlMENT the users request

The order pumpkins bot

Serverless computing is cloud computing execution – AWS calls it a Lambda code
Lambdas written in C#, GO, Java, Node.js or Python
Programming model is JSON in and JSON out

The code:

10.54

VR and Skeletons are on the floor.

10.50

Quick scan of the floor.

10.25

Intro to Agile Workshop

Incremental and iterative Product Development.
It’s not just SCRUM.
Waterfall vs Agile – agile is more fluid.
Many checkpoints along the way for agile.
You are building something useful
Useful code along the way
Fortnite is built with agile methodology
They had a GameJam to develop the assets for Fortnite
Building cross-functional teams is crucial – no delay in communication
Build, get feedback, and build again

09.33

Today’s Hackathon events and times are below.

09.13

Get in the Costume Contest!

You cant be scarier than this?

09.05

mike swift

Mike Swift opening the Hackathon.

Back in the day, Mike didn’t even know how to code 🙂

08.55

Ceremony has begun – CFO from ICIMS

It’s about the EDUCATION!

08.46

Were almost ready to start ceremonies at 8:45

22.38

T-8.5 hrs till the doors open at BellWorks for the ICIMS Hackathon!

Be sure to share moments from the day by using #iCIMSHalloweenHackathon on social media.

icims hackathon

21.59

Death Star Pumpkin

21.57

The Live Blog starts Saturday Morning October 27th, 2018

Come back then.

Welcome to the ICIMS Halloween Hackathon!

Get all the hackathon information here.

Get ready to hack on Saturday October 27. Come back then for the live blog.

What to expect from TechCrunch’s Disrupt 2017

By Paul B. Kaiser on May 13, 2017

What Is Disrupt?

TechCrunch Disrupt is the premier startup and technology news conference that brings to life all the things that make techcrunch.com great – startups, news, and a no “BS” attitude. Digital Intervention will be there this week to take in this experience. For full information from TechCrunch, click here.

What Can You Do At Disrupt?

TechCrunch Disrupt is for anyone who is interested in startups and tech. It has become the “Go To” event for Tech startups.

Get breaking news first-hand from our Disrupt main stage with high-profile speakers and thought leaders.
Watch the ultimate pitch competition during the Startup Battlefield, where a select handful of top-notch early stage startups compete for a $50,000 grand prize and the coveted Disrupt Cup.
Discover & meet hundreds of early stage startups in Startup Alley or Hardware Alley. Startups exhibiting in the Alley change each and every day!
Network and schedule meetings with other attendees through the Disrupt App.
Investors and Startups get matched with CrunchMatch, a curated matching program with private meeting spaces at Disrupt.
Decompress after a full day at the official Disrupt After Party.

Here are a few items you can expect at Disrupt NY 2017 according to Tech Crunch.

Derek Jeter and Jaymee Messler of The Players’ Tribune will discuss the future of the site and sports media. Facebook’s Fidji Simo will talk about how video leads the site’s content creation and what comes next. We have AngelList founder Naval Ravikant discussing changes in how investing is done. And author, famed World Chess Champion and political enthusiast Garry Kasparov will talk about his new book, “Deep Thinking: Where Machine Intelligence Ends and Human Creativity Begins.”

Incubus guitarist Michael Einziger is set to close the show on Wednesday, May 17th with a special musical presentation, featuring Pharrell Williams and Incubus, that will demonstrate the technology developed by his startup, MIXhalo. We’ll hear about what exciting things Instagram’s head of product, Kevin Weil, has in store for us and we’ll hear from the co-founder of Campaign Zero, Brittany Packnett, about how data is used in social movements. And, of course, there are 20 amazing young companies in Startup Battlefield that will compete to win the Disrupt Cup and $50,000.

Full agenda is here.

The Hackathon at Disrupt – Where Great Products Are Born in 24 Hours

Preceding the Disrupt Conference is Hackathon weekend on May 13-14, where developers and engineers descend from all over the world to take part in a 24-hour hacking endurance test. Teams join forces to build a new product, present it on the Disrupt stage to a panel of expert judges and an audience of tens of thousands and compete for a variety of prizes, including the chance to win free tickets to the Disrupt Conference. Products created at the Disrupt Hackathon have seen great success beyond the event, like GroupMe which was created overnight and ultimately acquired by Skype for $80M.

More info on the Hackathon.

Showcase Stage Demos In Startup Alley

Stop by the Showcase Stage in the heart of Startup Alley to see startups in these fields demo their company’s innovations at 12:00pm each day of the conference.

STARTUP BATTLEFIELD

Startup Battlefield brings the world’s top early stage startups together on one stage to compete for the coveted Disrupt Cup, a $50,000 prize, and the attention of media and investors. Since appearing on the TechCrunch stage, Battlefield alumni have collectively raised over $6.9 billion. The judges include TechCrunch editors as well as top VCs and entrepreneurs, and past winners include names like Dropbox, Mint, Yammer, Zenefits, and many more. Participation is free and open. More info.

Casey Neistat at TechCrunch 2016

Get the Users Guide to Disrupt

Innovation at Rutgers Hackathon 2016

By Paul B. Kaiser on April 16, 2016

It’s that time of year again for one of my favorite event at Rutgers – Hack RU. This year about 900 students are expected to attend the Rutgers Hackathon spring 2016. Held at the Rutgers RAC building, the event draws students from many different colleges and states. As they all spend 24 hours honing their coding skills, innovation is in the air.

What’s HackRU?

HackRU is a 24-hour hackathon at Rutgers University. We welcome hundreds of students to join us in building awesome software and hardware projects. Industry experts and mentors come from all over the country to create an environment that fosters an atmosphere of learning through tech talks and one-on-one guidance. They encourage beginner and advanced hackers alike to challenge themselves and expand their skills.

10 Tips for building a winning app at a hackathon.

Are more women attending Hackathons?

The women involved in computer science at Rutgers may be a small percentage of the students in that field, but they proved how powerful they are this weekend when they organized a Hackathon geared toward women. The “HackHers” has their won Hackathon as well.

Have more questions? Visit Hack RU

Photos from the Hackathon

Hack RU 2015 – 24 Hours of Non-Stop Hacking at Rutgers!

By Paul B. Kaiser on April 19, 2015

Twenty Four Hours of Non-Stop Hacking!

2,100 students signed up for this years Hackathon at Rutgers University. As of 3pm today, there were 800 at the RAC – Rutgers, New Brunswick, Livingston campus. This is the largest group of students hacking through the night, creating, developing and brainstorming your future at HackRU. These are truly the kids thinking up new apps. If you’re not familiar with a Hackathon, do not confuse this with “Hacking” and the connotation that is in the news so much. This is a collection of collaborative computer scientists, assembling at colleges and universities across the country. They work in groups to create new ideas, apps using the technology available. Some events have partners with VR – Oculus Rift, 3D printers and motion sensing tools that they can develop and test for while they are there.

The event is run by the Rutgers USACS (Undergraduate Student Alliance of Computer Scientists) who do an amazing job. Mike Swift who is the CEO and co-founder of Major League Hacking (MLH) helps similar college associations to achieve their goals for the hackathons. I met him today and he has a great attitude for setting these events up and letting the kids run the show. Mike Swift, simply known as “Swift” is a cool casual dude. Mike Swift is the founder of the premier platform for managing hackathons, and the Commissioner of Major League Hacking, the Official Collegiate Hackathon League. Formerly, Swift was a developer evangelist at SendGrid and an engineer at Crowdtap. Swift lives in New York and travels around the US and now Europe doing hackathons.

Michelle Chen who is one of the main organizers at HackRU has done a spectacular job at hosting these 1,000 techno-geeks. In speaking with her today, she is totally dedicated to providing students with a top notch experience. No sleep for the organizers tonight!

The students go in for 24 hours and don’t sleep for 24 hours. They take on a task that has them leaving with a better understanding of what it takes to create something brilliant.In addition, there are many Rutgers volunteer students, like Matthew Kaiser, who start planning way in advance as well as assisting throughout the event. Matthew attends all the HackRU events, also goes to other schools, such as the U of Maryland last weekend. If you have not witnessed a couple hours of these events and spoken to the students there, I highly recommend you go and witness the experience. The intensity is thick.

Several of the vendors this year include Google, Twitter, Bloomberg, Linode, L3 communications, Merck, and many more. They provide opportunities for the students and some freebies too. The HackRU ends tomorrow and awards will be handed out to the best apps developed during the show. I look forward to next years event.

Many great photos from HackRU today.

What the Hack?

By Paul B. Kaiser on March 1, 2015

HackTCNJ 2015 – Hacking for Fun – It’s going down!

The Hackathon at TCNJ is this weekend for 24 hours straight. Kids from TCNJ, Rutgers and neighboring schools all assemble for a educational event.

If you ever wanted to dedicate 24 hours to extend your knowledge and learn a new technology platform or framework, HackTCNJ is the perfect time to jump into a new area. They’ll have development professionals on hand to engage, inspire and assist as much or as little as you wish. Build a Web app? You bet. Mobile app? Not a problem.

Oculus had 20 units for the kids to experience first hand.

The event is hosted by TCNJ ACM

The mission of the TCNJ ACM student chapter is to create a collaborative environment in which all students interested in computing science can come together to share ideas, partake in activities, and learn together. ACM activities include tech talks, group trips, and an annual hackathon, HackTCNJ. ACM also connects students to resources in the computing community such as hackathons, computer science groups, and professional or academic opportunities. We are an ACM accredited chapter and we welcome all students regardless of ethnicity, experience level, major, or gender. TCNJ ACM membership is also free for all students.

Visit their website for more information.