Student Blog
Brought to you from your @GoogleStudents friends. From pre-university to PhD (and beyond), we got you.
PennApps: Largest student hackathon paves the road for innovative apps
March 15, 2013
Forty eight hours of continuous hacking in a lecture hall may not be your first choice for a three-day weekend, but for hundreds of students, it was a voluntary commitment at
PennApps
, the largest university hackathon in the world. Teams from about 40 colleges in the US, Canada and Zurich, traveled to Philadelphia for the MLK weekend, to conquer the three floors of the Towne Building at UPenn. Along with them, they brought laptops,
Arduino kits
, sleeping bags, snacks, and even their own drip coffee machines. The competition offered monetary prizes, but for most of the students, it was more than just winning a prize. Walking down the hallways, you could sense that every team member had the excitement of building awesome technology.
The competition started on Friday afternoon following the presentations by the sponsors, and ended with the judging session on Sunday morning. It was a tough decision to pick the winners. There were dozens of amazing projects, from augmented reality apps which mashed reviews and photos of places onto Google StreetView (
Astoria
), to apps which let you use multiple smartphones as one large screen (
Mosaic
). Students also used hardware such as building voice controlled coffee machines through Android devices (
Mrs.Coffee
).
In the end though, the team from Berkeley came out on top with their RFID-based personal inventory system (
Inventory
). In their demo, the Inventory team showed that the system they built can keep track of where a user's belongings are. They played a situation where the student using the system left the stage without his passport to go to the airport, and the system texted student's phone about the forgotten passport. You can imagine how useful this would be if built for a larger population.
Evan Benshetler (a fellow software engineer at Google and UPenn alum) and I were onsite for the whole span of the competition. We spent our time helping students with their design issues, debugging their code and using public
Google APIs
. This year, there were quite a few teams which integrated Google Maps API into their projects, which draws the attention to how the space in software world is still open for new ideas in combining maps with new technology.
At the end of the competition, the participants all had a strong sense of creating something cool that matters, and going through every step to make it a reality. We hope to see the passion which fueled the students during these 48-hours to continue glowing. We also applaud the student organizers in their amazing effort to keep things going with very little sleep.
As part of the winner’s prize, Google NYC will host the first place team in our office for an all expenses paid day trip, where they will do lunch, a tour of the office space, and present their winning app in front of a panel of Google engineers.
Congratulations to all of our PennApps participants. Google looks forward to continuing our partnership and supporting the next generation of developers!
Posted by Baris Yuksel, Software Engineer
Post a Comment
Labels
A Day in the Life of a New Grad in Google Dublin
7
AdCamp
2
AdMob
11
Ambassador Program
14
APAC
7
Appy Trails
28
Back to School
4
Better Know a New Grad
1
Better Know an Intern
16
Better Know an Office
4
Black History Month
10
Caitlin Talks to an Engineer
9
Chrome Extensions
3
Chromebook
1
College Tips by Google
1
Community
14
Conferences
16
CSSI
5
Day in the Life
2
deSTEMber
1
Development Programs
1
Diary of a Business Associate Intern
1
Diary of a Summer Intern
41
Diary of a Summer Intern - Erika
9
Diary of a Summer Intern - Franklin
3
Diary of a Summer Intern - Jess
3
Diary of a Summer intern - Luke
3
Diary of a Summer Intern - Madelaine
4
Diary of a Summer Intern - Pablo
3
Diary of a Summer Intern - Rio
4
Diary of a Summer Intern 2012
18
Diary of an MBA Intern
2
Education
19
EMEA
44
Europe
7
Events
13
Exploring Design at Google
4
GHC15
6
Going Green
6
Gone Google
2
Google Code University
1
Google Code-in
1
Google Games
3
Google Japan
1
Google Lime Scholarship
1
Google on campus
2
Google Online Marketing Challenge
10
Google Science Fair
2
Google.org
1
Google+
6
Googlers
14
Googlers Beta
11
Grace Hopper
11
GradTips
9
Hangouts On Air
21
Inside ITRP
6
Intern Insights
31
Intern Program
73
Interns Making an Impact
7
Interviews
1
Jobs
5
just for fun
30
K-12 (Pre-university)
14
LATAM
2
Life at Google
17
Middle East
1
My Path to Google
23
My Summer at Google
15
My Summer at Google 2012
10
North America
4
Office Environment
4
Open Source
9
PhD
7
Products
94
Programs and Competitions
116
Recruiter Tips and Tricks
15
Rice Plus
4
Scholarships
56
Search
1
STEM
2
STEP
1
Student Tips
15
Students
13
Summer of Code
1
Teach Parents Tech
10
Tech Students
3
Tips and Tricks
27
Women in Engineering
20
Young Innovators
10
YouTube
2
Archive
2018
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2017
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2016
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2015
Dec
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2014
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2013
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2012
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2011
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2010
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2009
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2008
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Feed
Google
on
Follow @GoogleStudents
Interested in opportunities and programs for students? Visit
google.com/students
.
