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Hackathon 2018: the best computer challenges, are you joining?

Flickr by Elena Olivo, Copyright: NYU Photo Bureau The best computing challenges, will you join? Innovation, solutions and creativity in the form of computing challenges What are the upcoming hackathon challenges of 2018? The year has already left some hackathons behind, but many more are coming. There are options for all tastes, so take a look and make up your mind! Hackathon, the revolution of the digital age The word, a blend of “hacker” and “marathon,” hints at what we mean when we talk about hackathon. For those who only vaguely know the term, a hackathon refers to a gathering that can last several days among programmers (students or professionals) who seek to find solutions to programming challenges to create software. Often it is a cooperative process with social aims, such as developing software or applications for an organization, and generally it is held as a contest with a limited time. At the end of the event, teams present their ideas, prototypes and developments before a panel of judges. Participants in hackathons usually compete for some prize, such as a scholarship for a course, money, and advanced computing equipment, although the most important thing is, first of all, recognition within the field and the contacts that are made. Moreover, it often represents the first contact between budding programmers and companies. Both schools and universities as well as companies and organizations can organize a hackathon, and individuals can sign up alone, in pairs, or in groups... For example, the III Hackathon Health Spain 2018 - which will be held on June 15 and 16 in Madrid - will call programmers and designers so that during those days they can exchange ideas with patients and healthcare professionals and thus create applications and programs that help improve healthcare assistance.   How to find and decide which hackathon you will join in 2018?   The website Hackathon.io gathers in a database more than 4,200 indexed hackathons. Around 72,400 people communicate through this site to manage, rate and sign up for all the hackathons around the world. On the Spanish website Hackathon Spain, programmers can also check the calendar of upcoming events. For example, one of the next ones - on April 7 - will be organized by the school of digital professionals KSchool, which together with the digital newspaper El Confidencial will hold its first hackathon dedicated to the world of design and user experience in 2018.     The goal of this hackathon is “to highlight all the talent of UX designers” to demonstrate “the possibilities for improvement that a digital media outlet has,” explain the organizers on their website. In this case, up to 20 people can participate in pairs. The prize is a scholarship at the school and the design challenge that participants will face must be a product for mobile phones. Participants must also deliver a working prototype and present their work to the jury for 5 minutes. The other two criteria will be revealed on the day of the hackathon.   Hackathon 2018: several options   One hackathon you can still sign up for is the third edition of the Hackathon Time2Hack Getafe . The organizers explain on their website that, for them, a hackathon is, besides “an intensive and immersive experience of agile prototyping and technological solutions creation,” an event where groups of people interested in a problem or topic posed (which acts as a guiding thread) propose and design prototypes that solve the hypotheses raised, share knowledge and attend innovation workshops related to the hackathon’s theme. They also call for participation simply to learn from other participants, teach others what you can contribute most, or merely to give ideas that respond to the needs of the chosen theme. It is not necessary to be an expert programmer to participate, but “a strong desire to learn, have fun, design prototypes and spend a great weekend,” they affirm. Specifically, Time to Hack Getafe will take place over the full weekend from April 20 to 22 and its theme will be related to designing technological solutions to improve the daily life of people with disabilities. Photo by Liran Mimon, uploaded by Itzik Edri for Wikimedia Israel (Wikimedia Israel) , via Wikimedia Commons   There will also be talks in schools to spread awareness of these educational opportunities and their importance in education. And to finish, one of the major events - in terms of hackathons in 2018 - will be HackUPC, which will be held in Barcelona in October and for which dates have not yet been set. The organizers have called 700 programming students from around the world to create web, mobile, hardware designs or “anything on the table” during 36 hours. Projects will be judged based on creativity, technical difficulty, refinement in finish, and usability.   Hackathon 2018: results   And as we said there are hackathons for all tastes, among those already held there are some very curious ones, like this one organized by the Vatican City that sought to promote collaboration among students worldwide of different ethnicities and religions and the use of technology among institutions for “missions.” There are also those seeking sector-specific solutions in industry, like this hackathon held in March 2018. In Spain, the last hackathon held in 2018 was “HackForGood”, an inter-university meeting organized at the School of Telecommunications Engineering of the Polytechnic University of Madrid where participants from all over Spain developed innovative technological solutions to respond to a series of challenges. Among the winners stand out solutions such as applications to facilitate the geolocation of city traffic lights for the blind or an application for people with Down Syndrome to learn to read and write (LEARNFORDOWN).