Florida Polytechnic University, in partnership with IBM, Lenovo and Flagship Solutions Group, hosted its first Hackathon April 15-17, providing 100 students the opportunity to hone their software coding skills in a friendly competition to build a cloud-based app in a very short time frame.
The industry partners provided the software platform as a service to allow enterprising participants to develop and show off their coding skills.
Students had the opportunity to try their hand at IBM Bluemix cloud software in a challenge to build applications while collaborating and inspiring each other to find solutions to a defined problem. Participants were able to use the University’s high-performance Lenovo NeXtScale supercomputer to design, develop and test their apps.
“This Hackathon is a great experience for our students to try new technology and utilize their creativity in developing a cloud-based application,” said Tom Hull, Florida Poly’s Chief Information Officer. “It’s been a good experience to plan our first Hackathon here at Florida Poly, and we already see some great efforts coming from our students. We see this as a beginning of a series of similar events with industry partners that challenge students and enable them to develop their skills.”
“Flagship Solutions Group is very proud to be part of Florida Poly’s first Hackathon,” said Tom Mitchell, vice president of sales at Flagship. “As a Premier IBM and Lenovo Business Partner, we are excited to work with these powerful and reputable companies and for the University to participate.”