Students Try a Hackathon with IBM Bluemix and IBM Watson
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tart small, think big,” were the motivational words of Angie Li Krackeler, North America Cloud Technical Evangelist at IBM in a welcoming speech at “Breakers @ Menlo College.” The hackathon event for students was cosponsored by IBM Bluemix, IBM Watson and Menlo College. IBM Bluemix deals with the cloud development platform for building, running, and managing apps and services. IBM Watson is an artificially intelligent computer system, i.e., it understands natural language and is not programmed. IBM Watson is capable of answering questions that are more human-like than a computer. Watson was specifically developed to answer questions that won Watson $1 million on the quiz show Jeopardy! in 2011. A hackathon is an event in which computer programmers and graphic designers, interface designers and project managers collaborate intensively on software projects. Hackathons typically last between a day and a week. The event, created by Professor Jeannice Fairrer Samani, an adjunct faculty member at Menlo College, lasted until nearly midnight and offered students a chance to try invention and pitching ideas.
Top left, Devin Nunez and other students had fun building projects with marshmallows and spaghetti. Right, Professor Jeannice Fairrer Samani’s event, Breakers @ Menlo.
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Professor Krackeler’s outline for creating a new app or program is: • Create your story first • Target your audience and market • Use teamwork to collaborate and communicate together • Define the opportunity in your new product • Explain what is unique about your product • Ask yourself what benefits you get from it • Produce a demo As explained by Professor Krackeler, once you follow the preceding steps, you should write a pitch that is no more than a minute long. Tell a story in the pitch. Don’t just try to sell your product in the pitch. Talk about a subject who used it and how it made a difference. At the end of the day, the success of your product depends on the impact of the innovation and the value of your product.