Events
Announcing HACK UCSC 2014 with $10K prize funded by community
by Doug Erickson
Founder of Santa Cruz New Tech Meetup
Updated March 31, 2014: For late breaking additional information and schedule, see:
UCSC and the Santa Cruz Tech Community Spark the First Annual Hackathon
Event themed “Santa Cruz” will take place April 5-6, 2014
UCSC and an enthusiastic Santa Cruz tech community announce the first annual hackathon: HACK UCSC. Student developers, designers, and entrepreneurs will come together on April 5-6, 2014 for a 2-day sprint to produce mobile apps and web programs. The theme of the event is “Santa Cruz”. The resulting apps will be scored on their relevance to the Santa Cruz community, technical merit, and idea novelty.
(Mark Adams, LaunchHack 2013)
“UCSC has a great pool of talent,” says Brent Haddad, Director of the UCSC Center of Entrepreneurship. “This event will be the perfect showcase for what Slugs can do.”
HACK UCSC is the brainchild of Mark Adams, a student coordinator at the UCSC Center for Entrepreneurship.
“The first hackathon I went to was LaunchHack in 2013, a massive, chaotic two day coding jam. What struck me most was the energy and enthusiasm of all participants, regardless of age, expertise, and background. A hackathon pushes you to your limit. I was hooked!”
Mark wants to bring that same transformative experience to his fellow students. An estimated 150 UCSC students will participate in the 2 day event.
“This event brings together the engineering talent at UCSC with the vibrant tech community in Santa Cruz,” explains Doug Erickson, founder of the 1,500 member Santa Cruz New Tech MeetUp. “Each student team will include one mentor from the Santa Cruz tech community. We know that connecting UCSC students with Santa Cruz resources results in new Santa Cruz-based businesses.”
Erickson is a UCSC alumni with a 25 year career in high tech, building global channels and communities for companies like Cisco WebEx and SugarCRM.
$10,000 cash prize
A $10,000 cash prize has been funded by the Santa Cruz tech community including: South Swell Ventures, Santa Cruz New Tech MeetUp, City of Santa Cruz Economic Development, Cruzio, NextSpace, Civinomics, and Mainstreets. The top teams will share the $10,000 prize.
Kickoff Speaker
Kicking off HACK UCSC is Lila Tretikov, winner of a Stevie Awards for Women in Business. Lila has nearly 20 years experience in engineering and product management. She has held board and executive positions at Zamurai, SugarCRM, Telespree, GrokDigital, and holds more than 6 patents.
Awards Dinner
An Awards Dinner will be held on Sunday, April 6, wherein exciting guest speakers will precede the presentation of awards to the top hackers. This dinner event is only open to select student teams, participating Judges, Mentors, speakers, and sponsors.
Sponsors
Community sponsorships are provided by Santa Cruz Tech Beat, TechRaising, The Armada Group, and LightSpeed. IEEE has volunteered student help for the event. New sponsors are welcome, and will be announced throughout the event.
For event updates, and more information on how to join this inaugural event as a sponsor, a mentor, visit SCNT MeetUp HACK UCSC 2014.
UCSC students: learn more and register to participate!
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Sara Isenberg publishes Santa Cruz Tech Beat for the benefit of the extended business and technology community. When she is not volunteering her time for the tech scene, Sara makes her living by managing software projects, web strategy planning, and providing development team services (including account management, vendor management, strategic partner management, beta project management, referrals to qualified technical team members, and more). Please visit her website: Sara Isenberg Web Consulting & Project Management, or contact Sara by email if you have any project management, account management, or Development Team leadership or service needs.
Tagged Hack UCSC, UC Santa Cruz, UCSC, UCSC Hackathon
