How can foot traffic be increased in downtown Cape Girardeau?

That’s a question Southeast Missouri State University students raced to solve Saturday while competing at the university’s first Blue Hack.

Modeled after IBM’s internal Blue Hack competition, the hackathon challenges participants to solve a community problem while working collaboratively with their peers. During Saturday’s event, students discussed solutions to creating more traffic to and through downtown Cape Girardeau.

Fourteen students, divided into six teams, competed at Catapult Creative House in Cape Girardeau, Small Business & Technology Development Center (SBTDC) director Jakob Pallesen said. The competition began at 8 a.m. and lasted through the afternoon, with pitch presentations beginning around 4 p.m. Teams began by brainstorming solutions, using Catapult’s mobile whiteboards and stacks of colorful sticky notes to chart out ideas. They then focused their ideas and crafted a pitch that would be presented to a panel of “sharks,” a reference to the entrepreneurship television show “Shark Tank.” Each team was given five minutes to present their solution, with five minutes also being allotted for questions.

Sophomores Abigail Jeschke and Bailey Bremer spent the competition drafting a plan for a downtown event center. The building, they said, would connect Century Casino and downtown Cape Girardeau, bringing together the two geographical locations and the target audiences they serve.

Other pitches focused on bringing Southeast students to downtown businesses or involving Old Town Cape in creating an increase in traffic.

A panel of five judges evaluated teams based on business model, clarity of pitch, community value and net present value of the idea.

Zachary Locke, Kallie Shook, Steven Wall and Scott Wasmer brought home the $400 first-place prize with their idea to create Cape Club, a downtown lounge that would promote local businesses and partner with the university to allow use of students’ meal plans.

This is the first year Southeast hosted this hackathon, which grew from an idea from Southeast’s annual Innovation Challenge and Southeast alum Ashley AuBuchon-Arcand. After the idea was discussed during a Southeast Innovation Challenge, AuBuchon-Arcand, an IBM Global Innovation Program manager, brought some of the ideas presented by IBM and adapted the competition to better suit the Cape Girardeau community, Pallesen said.

At IBM, AuBuchon-Arcand oversees internal Blue Hack business competitions while also being involved with some of the 35 Blue Hack events IBM has hosted at locations such as the University of Pittsburgh and Stevens University.

The problem-solving aspect is important to the challenge as it may also translate to career skills, AuBuchon-Arcand said.

“It really shows students what can happen when you get diverse groups of people together. With different backgrounds and ideas, you can come up with better solutions,” she said. “It helps them learn these life skills that are going to apply to every aspect of their life — personal and professional.”

Similar competitions are held at universities across the world to tackle issues such as health care, climate change and human trafficking. Cape Girardeau’s first hackathon was held January of last year and addressed health care in the Cape Girardeau area, according to previous reporting by the Southeast Missourian.