Presented by the College of Computing & Informatics (CCI), Philly Codefest is a free software and hardware hackathon that encourages students and professionals from all experience levels and backgrounds to work together to develop innovative solutions to help solve real world challenges.
With no coding experience required, Philly Codefest is open to everyone – just bring your creativity! Attendees will form teams to work on projects, and then will present their final creations to a panel of judges – comprised of Drexel faculty, sponsors and respected members of the Philadelphia tech community – for a chance to win awesome prizes.
2019 THEME: ECONOMIC INEQUALITYPhilly Codefest 2019, Drexel's premier hackathon for social good, will be dedicated to generating real-world, scalable solutions to help end economic inequality in Philadelphia. According to a 2018 report by The Pew Charitable Trusts, more than a quarter of Philadelphians — about 400,000 people — live below the poverty line, with Philadelphia's poverty rate ranking among the highest of the nation's largest cities. Codefest 2019 will be the first hackathon in the city of Philadelphia to address economic inequality head on, with projects and challenges centering around the following categories:
- Financial literacy and security
- Food insecurity
- Environmental safety
- Digital divide
- Healthcare access and the opioid epidemic
- Affordable housing and homelessness
- Voter access
- Employment equity
Codefest Schedule:
May 4 |
Saturday |
|
8:30 – 10:00am |
Doors open, participant check-in, Breakfast |
Drexel DAC |
9:00-10:00 |
Team Building (For those without a team) |
Linode Workshop Room |
10:00am-11:00am |
Codefest Kick-Off |
DAC Basketball Court |
11:00am-12:00pm |
Coding Begins/Additional Team Building |
Linode Workshop Room |
12:00pm |
Lunch |
DAC |
1:30pm |
Comcast Information Session |
Media Room |
2:00-3:00pm |
Comcast Resume Review Workshop |
DAC President’s Suite |
2:00pm |
Vanguard Personal Branding Workshop |
Linode Workshop Room |
2:30pm |
American Water Challenge Workshop |
Media Room |
3:00pm |
Google Cloud Platform Workshop |
Linode Workshop Room |
3:30pm |
DrExcel Health Solutions Incubator |
Media Room |
4:00pm |
American Water A.I. Workshop |
Linode Workshop Room |
5:00pm |
Dinner |
DAC |
6:00pm |
Deadline for teams to register on Devpost to notify judges of problem statement and official team members |
|
7:00pm |
Philly Codefest Snack Break |
|
11:00pm |
Late Night Snack |
DAC South Court |
May 5 |
Sunday |
|
12:00am-11:00am |
Coding Continues |
DAC Basketball Court |
7:30am |
Breakfast |
DAC |
11:00am |
Coding Ends! Lunch & Demo Fair Setup |
DAC |
12:00-3:00 |
Philly Codefest Demo Fair Judging |
DAC Basketball Court |
3:00pm-4:00pm |
Codefest Audience Choice Voting & Networking |
DAC Basketball Court |
4:00pm-5:00pm |
Codefest Closing Ceremony & Award Announcements |
DAC Basketball Court |
Eligibility
Codefest is open to all college students and professional 18 and older.
Unfortunately, we cannot permit minors to attend/participate in Codefest.
All teams must enter a submission for their hack on the 2019 Philly Codefest Devpost Site (https://2019-philly-codefest.devpost.com/). To create a submission you must create a Devpost account and you must register for Philly Codefest 2019. Teams that do not have a submission created by Saturday at 6pm will be disqualified, there will be no exceptions. You can continue to update your submission until 11am Sunday. However, you must create a submission before 6pm on Saturday or your hack will not be judged.
The following link contains detailed information on creating a new submission on Devpost.
https://help.devpost.com/hc/en-us/articles/360021748772-How-to-enter-a-submission
Once you register for Philly Codefest 2019 you can click the “Enter a submission” button on the home page of the Philly Codefest 2019 Devpost site.
Requirements
The theme for Philly Codefest 2019, economic inequality, encourages participants to develop novel applications and tools to impact a variety of challenges affecting the Greater Philadelphia area and beyond.
Your app will be judged based on the following criteria
Impact
How does you project address one of the themes surrounding economic inequality?” And what type of impact will it have on the community?
Innovation and Creativity
How innovative and creative is your app? How much did you develop during the event?
User Experience
Is the app usable in its current state? How is the user experience? Does it work?
Science Fair Judging Guidelines
Teams will be judged in a science fair environment. All teams will stay at their assigned tables and the judges will come to them. Saturday night or Sunday morning your team will be assigned to a specific table with a number on it. This number is what the judges will use to identify your hack when they are trying to locate your team and also when they are judging.
Science Fair Judging will take place from 12:00-3:00 pm on Sunday.
Each team will have a total of 5 minutes in front of the judges.
3 minutes for presentation/demo
2 minutes for follow up questions
At the end of the 5 minutes the judges will move on to the next group. There will be a timer in place so use your time wisely.
Audience Choice Prize
This year we have an Audience choice prize. The audience will be asked to go into Devpost and review the submissions and vote for their favorite. Make sure you provide enough information about your hack in your Devpost submission. Audience members may also view your hack during the science fair as well. Judges may also use your Devpost submission for additional information about your project.
Sponsor Prizes
There are a number of sponsor prizes this year. When you create your submission in Devpost make sure you select all of the sponsor prizes you would like to compete for. Our sponsors will do their own judging and they will be visiting all of the teams who selected their prize in Devpost. Make sure you select all of the prizes you are competing for. Sponsor prizes will be announced during the closing ceremony so make sure you stick around for those announcements.
Prizes
$13,200 in prizes
Philly Codefest 2019 Student Team Award
This award will recognize the best student team hack. This award is only eligible to 100% student teams!
Winning team to share $2,500 cash prize
Winning team will also visit the Comcast Technology Center for a lab tour & meeting with Rick Rioboli and others
Philly Codefest 2019 Collaborative Award
Philly Codefest 2019 Collaborative Award: In the spirit of Philly Codefest’s mission, the Collaborative Award is only open to teams with a mix of students and professional participants. This prize will go to the best overall hack.
Drexel CCI Corporate Partners Program -Philly Codefest 2019 People's Choice Award
This prize is awarded to a hardware or software team/project with the most votes from Philly Codefest attendees. Voting for this award to take place between 3-4pm on Sunday, May 5. You must be present to vote.
Philly Codefest Best Hack for Social Good
In the spirit of Codefest's 2019 Theme: Economic Inequality, the Best Hack for Social Good will be award to the team that best addresses Philadelphia's inequality issue.
Comcast Learning Module for Internet Essentials Customers
Create a Learning Module for our Internet Essentials Customers. Internet Essentials is our low cost Internet service for Vets, low income families, and Seniors. Come up with a platform that helps our customers develop professionally through development, job searching, etc. Judges will be looking for platform service(s) taking a central role in the solution.
Comcast Low Cost Internet for Students
Come up with a way to find a low cost internet solution to help your community and bridge the gap of economic inequality. Judging criteria for the challenge is practicality and realism of the solution provided.
American Water Volunteer App - Give/Receive Together
Create a web crawler app that will aggregate information about volunteer opportunities at events ranging from donating to food pantries, technology training, employment networking for women and minorities, environmental cleanup, and much more (the possibilities are endless). The overall goal should be to develop a user interface for people who want to donate their time or materials, as well as people who want to benefit from these events. Search parameters should be easily navigable by the user based on their location, role (volunteer vs. user), area of interest (technology training, legal services, food pantry, etc.). Users should be able to view their results in list form, as well as in calendar view.
American Water Code for Water
The purpose of this challenge is to create a game to target students of all ages to learn how to code. Coding can seem a daunting to task to new students- make a fun game inspired from games like Candy Crush, Angry Birds, and Homescapes where -as the students advance in the game, they learn more coding principles. Winning a level earns players points, which they can spend “cleaning up” a natural, water-centered area such as a forest stream, a beach, or a river bank. The environments should be engaging, and there should be a story element which encourages people to keep moving forward and learning more about both code and water.
Google Best Use of Google Cloud Platform
The team that makes the best use of the Google Cloud Platform.
Close School Innovation Award
To the team with the most innovative hardware or software hack.
Linode 2019 Best Hardware Hack
This prize is awarded to the team voted on by judges to have the best hardware hack.
Indeed - Most Helpful for Job Seekers
How can open data be used to enrich and empower the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, or even
global job seeker experience?
Vanguard - Financial Literacy
How might we educate low income families on their financial health? (Use technology to help increase financial literacy. You or your team can create a game, an app, a tool or whatever you think is best as long as it helps teach low income families about how to manage and even grow their finances.)
Devpost Achievements
Submitting to this hackathon could earn you:
How to enter
Philly Codefest is a 36-hour software and hardware hackathon with a goal of developing innovative solutions to help solve real world challenges. Open to all college students and professionals, Codefest gives everyone the opportunity to grow and learn — no matter your background or skill level.
During Codefest, participants will have the opportunity to interact with technology leaders, mentors and some of the most sought-after companies in the Philadelphia area and tech field at large.
Codefest isn’t just a chance for you to build hacks; it’s also an opportunity for you build relationships within a community. Philly Codefest’s collaborative environment allows teams of all kinds push the boundaries of innovation and take creative risks for a chance to win big prizes. Learn more at www.phillycodefest.com.
Judges

Denise Agosto
Professor, Drexel CCI

Bikash Agrawal
Senior Technologist, American Water

Siqi Chen
Product Scientist, Indeed

Michael Chu
Associate Teaching Professor, CCI

Jill Cloud
Sr. Program Coordinator, American Water

Abhiroop Das
VP Technology Issues Management, MUFG Bank

Kenneth Green
Senior Technologist, American Water

Kevin Heidt
Lead Software Engineer, Homenet Automotive

Nick Homnyom
Software Engineer, American Water

Simon Joyce
Software Engineer, American Water

Andrew Miller
IT Manager

Srilokh Moram
Technologist, American Water

Erik Oberg
Product Scientist, Indeed

Tammy Pirmann
Assistant Teaching Professor, CCI

Alex Poole
Assistant Professor, CCI

Hemeema Prathuri
Software Engineer DevOps, American Water

Michelle Rogers
Associate Professor, CCI

Sinan Sahin
Software Engineer, American Water

Mark Smith
VP, Technology & Innovation, American Water

Dim Sukte
Compliance - Technology and Innovation, American Water

Jeanne Hayden
Vanguard, Manager, Technical Project Managment

Andrew Szajlia
Vanguard, Infrastructure Security Architect

Michael Uy
Vanguard, Developer II

Paul Lavicka
DXC, Principal HRIS Analyst

Eric Robinson
Comcast, Principal Engineer

Jerry Overton
DXC, DXC Fellow, and Head of AI
Judging Criteria
-
Impact
How does you project address one of the themes surrounding economic inequality?” And what type of impact will it have on the community? -
Innovation and Creativity
How innovative and creative is your app? How much did you develop during the event? -
User Experience
Is the app usable in its current state? How is the user experience? Does it work?
Questions? Email the hackathon manager
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