The winners of Dice’s first mobile hackathon (above) received a variety of prizes.
More than 70 students and technology professionals registered to compete for a chance at $10,000 in cold, hard cash at the inaugural Dice Mobile Hackathon last weekend in Ankeny, Iowa.
The event, held at Des Moines Area Community College Future Farmers of America Enrichment Center, kicked off quietly at 9 a.m. on Saturday with 13 teams spread across round tables full of snacks, laptops, coffee and power cords.
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Each team had between one and five participants, and team names ranged from straightforward to facetious. Hackathon projects could be submitted to multiple categories, but only win for one. Members of the Dice.com development team were on hand to troubleshoot with any teams using the Dice API as part of their project, and Dice.com additionally supplied games such as ping pong and bags for activity during participant breaks.
Those breaks didn’t happen often, according to Dice.com staffers, because the teams were so focused on their projects. Some participants viewed the hackathon as a chance to blow off steam and have fun, while others took it very seriously. Half stayed up all night working, pausing for naps on the hallway couches, while others went home for the night.
At 5:15 a.m., the first hackathon project was turned in, with the last entry arriving just before the 10 a.m. deadline on Sunday. Teams had five minutes to present their projects to the judges, who then quickly asked a series of questions concerning topics such as the team’s target audience for the app, the roles of each team member and the perimeters of different app functions.
Judges for the hackathon included Manish Dixit, vice president of engineering at Dice; Nick Parker, senior developer at Zetetc; Dan Shipton, CEO of BitMethod; Jason Mead, developer lead at Dwolla; and Nate Buwalda, consultant at Lean Techniques.
“We judged based on usefulness, technical difficulty, polish and creativity,” Buwalda said. “The breadth of technologies used was impressive, and all sorts of disciplines were represented. But for the winning app, it came down to this: Would we go out and spend our own money in the app store for it?”
For Team Hedgehog Array, comprised of Chuck Rolek and Eric Ponto, the judges said yes. Their project, Make Me Move, won Best Overall at the hackathon and helped the pair take home $3,500 in cash.
Rolek and Ponto both work at Principal Financial Group as front-end developers and heard about the Mobile Hackathon on Twitter. Utilizing the Dice.com API, Make Me Move lets users take and upload a picture of their resume without having to first create a profile. The app then pulls skills to search for jobs that could entice the user to move from their current location to a new one.
Make Me Move even provides current-to-future salary comparison to help the user plan for and adjust to potential cost of living changes. And for businesses, the app allows them to expand their job search area to potentially bring in better candidates.
“The hackathon was a cool opportunity for us to try some new things,” Rolek said. “We appreciated the chance to be innovative and create something useful.”
Dice.com Mobile Hackathon Winners
- Best Overall: Make Me Move—Utilizing the Dice.com API, it lets users take and upload a picture of their resume without having to first create a profile. Prize: $3,500
- Runner-Up: QRate—Allows users to catalog physical storage through a camera and voice recognition, using QR codes and search functionality for boxes entered into the system. Prize: $2,000
- Honorable Mention: Dawn Light – Suicide Crisis Hotline Lookup—Android app that uses GPS to let users look up a list of suicide crisis hotline phone numbers that are geographically near their phone. Prize: Keurig coffee maker
- Honorable Mention: Recommend Me—Uses LinkedIn and the Dice.com Jobs API to find jobs in a user’s area that are best matched to interests and skills, as well as ask connections for recommendations. Prize: Keurig coffee maker
- Best Use of Dice API: Social Worker—Hybrid application that makes job searching a social activity through Twitter, so that users can more easily search for and share job information on that platform. Prize: $2,000
- Best Student: EZCambus—A tool for students using buses in the Iowa City and Coralville areas. Prize: $1,000
- Best Design: RepoRanker—It brings Amazon-style social reviews to GitHub repositories. Prize: $1,500
Credits: Event photo courtesy of Dice.
