Women’s Day Hackathon

In celebration of International Women’s Day, Women Who Code San Diego is proud to have successfully completed our very first hackathon! The hackathon took place at the beautiful office of UE.co in downtown San Diego. In line with our goal of supporting women, we also collected donations of material items for the Women’s Resource Center.

Hackers collaborated in teams over a day long coding sprint to complete their projects. The teams came up with fantastic ideas and they all showed great enthusiasm while working together. For many of the participants this was their first time attending a hackathon. Deciding to take part of a hackathon for the first time can be an overwhelming and daunting task so it was great seeing so many choose our event as their first! 

Of course between long hours of coding we needed to eat!

The hackathon culminated in a presentation before a panel of judges with four teams taking home the ultimate prizes. Judges Kojo Kumah, April Wensel, Todd Foley, and Dr. Youwen Ouyang awarded prizes in four categories: Best Overall Hack, Most Innovative, Most Technically Challenging, and Most Social Impact.

Chryssa Jones, Chelsey Dolan, Frankie Rosales, Steph Huynh, and Lubna Alqadah  created an app called dressHer which was awarded the “Best Overall Hack”. This app was designed so women would be able to help other women find professional clothing.

Alexa Romasco, Nico D’Amico, Adrienne Hein, and Leeann Ho created an app called Media Literacy Education Tool which was awarded for being the “Most Innovative”. This app was created as a way for educators to teach young people to be critical of the information they are presented with.

Helen Pan and Sarah Minkoff created an app called Crazy Park which was awarded for being the “Most Technically Challenging”. This app uses crowd sourcing to gather data about parking locations to make parking less difficult.

Susan Tarnowski, Jayalaxmi Arasalike, Sahana Balram, Nikki Gupta, and Michael McDonald created an app called Neighborhood Nibbles which was awarded as having the “Most Social Impact”. This app was designed to allow people to donate leftover food from places such as restaurants, dining commons, and events by posting about the food they have left over.

All projects can be viewed under submissions at Devpost.  More photos and information can be found at the Women’s Day Hackathon Meetup event.

Special thanks to our sponsors:
UE.co for hosting our event and providing us with drinks and snacks.
PlayStation for providing all the meals, cupcakes, giveaways, and prizes.
Amazon for providing prizes.
Google for providing prizes.
O’Reilly for providing prizes.

Special thanks to the judges:
Kojo Kumah
April Wensel
Todd Foley
Dr. Youwen Ouyang

Special thanks to our mentors and volunteers:
Mentors: Mike Young, Amanda Pattridge, Jaleesa Conner, Mark Villa, Grace Uchida, Matt Madson, and Stuart Runyan.
Volunteers: Jasmine Kim, Grace Uchida, Gaby Gutierrez, Vy Truong, Charmaine George, Karen Espela, Amanda Pattridge, Martha Damian, and Debora Peyer.

Lastly, a huge thank you goes to Colleen Lavin who first proposed the idea of having a hackathon and worked tirelessly to bring this event into fruition!