Hacking problems away!

The theme of the hackathon was ‘Using technology to solve community problems’.

We had trainers from Google Developer Group Cape Town to assist with implementation, judges from Amazon Development Center and prizes from Facebook.

The judging criteria was:

Novelty
Creativity
Functionality
Visual design
Implementation effort.

With each team consisting of at least one female member, participants formed a diverse group from Second year to Honors students. Even though the time was very short to produce Minimum Viable Products , teams managed to impress the judges with prototypes that not only solved community problems but were practical too. The prototypes solved various problems from student security to employment to housing to learning. There is definitely power in diversity. We would like to congratulate the winners below for their effort and creativity.

First Place: Team ‘Donata’

They made an application to facilitate donation of biomatter such as blood, bone marrow, organs and postmortem body among others.

They had a winning strategy right from the start and walked away with exclusive goodies from Facebook.

The team consisted of Alfred Mothapo, Fanelesibonge Mbuyazi and Khomotjo Modipa.

Second Place: Team ‘Ride With Me’ and Team ‘Ukuya’

Team ‘Ride With Me’ made an application for ride sharing on campus.

Team ‘Ukuya’ made an application to connect people who want to walk together. Students studying on campus at night will definitely find use in this app.

Team ‘Ride With Me’ was made of all females: Alexandra Nel, Carla Wilby and Chelsea Tobias. Team Ukuya was made of Laura Cohen, Devin Stickells, Thomas Tumiel, Mogamat Nur Ally and Mathieu Maury-Jheengoor .

Honarable Mention

This team made a web application to learn the different South African languages. Forget duolingo, this team will teach the local languages as we speak them. We were even more impressed by the fact they were first years.