Hackathon contest seeks solutions to local charity's problems

Three teams of programmers tackled problems facing Big Brothers Big Sisters during a Hackathon hosted by Codefi as part of this year's Marquette Tech Week.

Big Brothers Big Sisters sought the programmers' help in finding better ways to recruit, match and manage mentors and mentees for the local charity. The programmers had 36 hours to devise as elegant a solution as they could, with $5,000 promised to the winning team.

Each entry was judged by a panel which included Big Brothers Big Sisters of Eastern Missouri executive director Ashley Seiler, Red Hat developer Ted Jones, Codefi co-founder Chris Carnell, superintendent of the Cape Girardeau school district Neil Glass and Rust Communications co-president Rex Rust.

The judges considered how closely each project was tailored to Big Brothers Big Sisters' problem, how feasible the project would be to implement and how user-friendly the end product would be.

The youngest entrant was 17-year-old Alexander Varga, who built a chat program he called BigBot to help streamline communication and automate data collection and meetup scheduling processes while retaining administrative oversight to ensure safety.

Alexander Varga presents his BigBot proposal to Hackathon judges Sunday during the Marquette Tech District's Tech Fest at Codefi in Cape Girardeau.Fred Lynch

Another entrant, Kevin Phelps, designed a platform called Master Calendar that allowed for the organization's scheduling and notification needs to be consolidated into a customizable calendar app. In addition to search and cross-reference functions, Phelps' calendar updated in real-time so users constantly have access to the most up-to-date information.

A six-person team of Vizient employees -- working out of the Cape Crucible -- created a web app that used multiple layers of information to help determine compatibility between potential mentor/child matches.

"I was just blown away by the creativity these guys brought to this process," Seiler said. "We just want to do a good quality job helping people and they helped us."

Codefi co-founder Brian Holdman said the competition is more than solving problems and cranking out lines and lines of code.

"Obviously, it helps the organization solve a problem its needing solved," he said. "But it also gets the developer community together, which doesn't always happen. People are busy. They have day jobs. It's more than just a cool project they get to work on."

Brandon Rachelski discusses the Cape Crucible team's presentation to Hackathon judges Sunday during the Marquette Tech District's Tech Fest at Codefi in Cape Girardeau.Fred Lynch

He also encouraged developers to attend a social at Coin-Op Cantina in downtown Cape Girardeau from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Monday.

Hackathon finalists will be chosen this week, and the prize winner announced Thursday during Marquette Techfest.

tgraef@semissourian.com

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