CodeDay on Tom's Journal

CodeDay San Diego Winter 2016

Wed, 24 Feb 2016 09:20:18 +0000

The sixth CodeDay in San Diego was a huge success. We returned to CyberHive this season, the venue that hosted the first CodeDay back in May 2014. This event was a little smaller than previous events, only 75 attendees registered for the event; however, the event was still a great success!

We lead more workshops than ever before, and included content for attendees who came to the event with some experience (an audience that has been underserved in past events).

Best Overall

Team: Team Tired

Project: 5 More Minutes

This was Alexis’ first CodeDay and he blew us away with his Pebble Watch App that counted down the minutes till his class was over. He used tools and languages that he did not know coming into the event, something that the judges commended him for. Everyone was very impressed with Alexis’ work.

Best App

Team: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Project: RNG Matchmaking

This Valentine’s themed app match attendees from various CodeDay Events and other Coding Organizations to each other using a “complex algorithm.” They took the results a step further, showing the audience how there was a gender imbalance in the technology sector and how we can promote women to get involved with coding.

Best Game

Team: Anthony

Project: Jump

Anthony continues to amaze event after event. This time he created an addicting game that featured a bird that had to jump up on randomly appearing platforms. If you failed to land on a platform, the bird would have a very un-happy ending. Anthony always amazes us with his willingness to help others and his creativity, even at 1am in the morning.

Special Award – Most Memes

Team: Meme Team

Project: Meme Defense Force

This award was well deserved by Sam and Johnny! They combined the best meme’s and made a tower defense style game from villains like DJ Khaled. We all got a good laugh from their game. We hope they make another one!

Special Award – Most Musical

Team: Fourier

Project: GNUSynth

Leo and Tiahm created an app to solve a problem. Tiahm creates music on his computer, but often needs a synthesizer, so they created one. The app used a myriad of audio analysis algorithms, including the Fourier Analysis (where the team got their name from).

Although this was one of San Diego’s smaller events, it was still a great success and the number of attendees worked well with the size and design of the venue.

Special Thanks to…

Our Judges: Darin Anderson, Mo Rahseparian

Our Local Event Management Team: Ayan (Public & Community Relations), TJ (Event Programming), and Alex (Day-Of Coordinator)

Our Local Organizers: Agnieszka, Salman, Leo and Dan

Our Venue Staff: Darin and Mo

Our Venue Sponsor: CyberTech (Home to CyberHive, iHive and Nest)

Our Community Sponsor: Cox California

CodeDay San Diego Fall 2015

Wed, 11 Nov 2015 16:18:36 +0000

The fifth CodeDay in San Diego was a huge success. Hosted at the new Central Library in Downtown San Diego, this CodeDay was one of the largest events yet. We had over 140 attendees register for the event, and 94 attendees ended up checking in to the event.

Looking back, the event was a big success for both the attendees and the staff members.

We took over the Helen Price Reading Room on the 8th floor, a beautiful space with a great view of the bay. CodeDay worked in collaboration with the City of San Diego, as well as the San Diego Public Library to put on the event. CodeDay San Diego was also made possible by JetBrains.

We had quite a few workshops at CodeDay San Diego, including an intro to Python Workshop that used PyCharm EDU; as well as an awesome Data Analysis workshop lead by Andrell Bower, from the City of San Diego.

Best Overall

Team: Assaf

We were very impressed by Assaf’s effort, he did not stop after building his snake & apple game, which was very cleanly coded, he went on to build a working, multi-user chat room using scratch, which involved complex encryption and several work-arounds to work with Scratch.

Best App

Team: Ronak

We really liked how well built this app was and how it was designed to serve a purpose. It was also one of the few apps that was fully deployed to a device.

Best Game

Team: Treacherous Turnips

We really liked how this team had an idea and that they went with it. We also really liked the concept and implementation, as well as the fact that it was an homage to their CS teacher.

Special Award – Most Creative

Team: Gatekeepers

We really liked their concept and how it stood out from all the other games at CodeDay San Diego. We were also very impressed with the implementation and the strategy behind the game.

Special Award – Best Effort

Team: TincyTurtle

We really liked how this is Austin’s second CodeDay and how he has grown since his last event. His game was very well made and although it was not perfect, it demonstrated excellent effort on his part.

Attendees at Work…

Presentations…

Overall, we had a really great time and we think that the attendees had a blast as well. Both the Staff and the Attendees felt that this was one of the best events yet.

Special Thanks to…

Our Judges: Lon Miller, Gary Hayslip, Maksim Pecherskiy

Our Local Organizers: Ayan, and TJ

Our Day-Off Staff: Alex, Lauren, and Ayesha

Our Library Staff: Erwin, Sherwood, Ryan, Alejandro, Jackie, Stephanie, Geneva, Taylor, Stacy, Kerry, and Kathryn

Our Venue Sponsor: The San Diego Public Library

Our Development Tool Sponsor: JetBrains

See you in February for CodeDay Winter!

Eat, Drink, Hack - 24 Hours at CodeDay (Winter 2015)

Sun, 12 Apr 2015 15:42:22 +0000

Would you like to learn how to make your own, super cool website? Or challenge your brain with a math puzzle? These were only two of the over 15 apps made by attendees at CodeDay.

CodeDay is a 24-hour programming marathon for Middle School through College Students. At CodeDay we focus on the people, not the end result and prices; and that is why we are different. Instead of judging solely based on how cool something is, we judge above all on whether the people had fun, pushed themselves, and learned something new. We invest in people and communities.

Ramona High School Student, Erik Fink and his team present their project, a website that is aimed to make learning Physics Easier.

CodeDay is held thrice-annually in upwards of 20 cities. We had over 90 people attend CodeDay San Diego, the second largest event nationwide. Participants were between 35-45% girls, and over 60% of the people who came were new to programming, coming in with little to no experience.

I had the pleasure of organizing CodeDay Winter 2015 this past February and it was a Blast. I am responsible for organizing and managing the event from start to finish. Planning for the event typically starts 3 months before the event, and is split up into three phases (venue, sponsors, and promotion). The most difficult task is finding a venue that is capable of holding around 100 people and allows us to stay overnight; some events don’t take place because they cannot find a venue in time. But this wasn’t the case in San Diego, we were hosted by CyberHive – a startup incubator in downtown San Diego.

CodeDay provides students an amazing way to learn things, make friends, and make connections that will prove to be useful later in life. CodeDay is an excellent learning environment for beginners because they have lots of resources available: workshops, volunteers, and the people around them; stuff you usually wouldn’t have at home.

Participants gather outside for presentations. Presentations are a time for participants to show off the cool things that they were able to make during the event.

The event is great because it gets rid of the daunting feeling in beginners when it comes to programming, it encourages students to learn and puts them with others like them so they can learn together. “CodeDay is a very social event as well, I’ve seen lots of friendships come out of CodeDay.”said TJ Horner a Local Organizer for CodeDay who has attended several CodeDays in the past. Local Organizers help to organize the event as well as help out the Evangelist during the Event. The evangelist is the emcee for the event, responsible for running the event and ensuring that everyone has a good time, I had the great opportunity to be the evangelist for CodeDay San Diego.

For more information go to… http://codeday.org

CodeDay - Fall 2014

Tue, 11 Nov 2014 15:00:13 +0000

CodeDay is a 24-hour programing marathon for Middle School through College students. It is hosted 3 times a year – Fall, Winter, and Spring. The dates are set to fit with the 3-day weekends, because this is a very tiring event. This time, CodeDay San Diego was hosted at the Ansir Innovation Center. The Ansir Innovation center is a Co-Working Space located in Kearny Mesa. They were one of a very small group that would let us host this event for 24-hours in their space.

CodeDay is similar to many other hackathons for students, lots of food and little sleep. Many students depend on WiFi, like the rest of us, for looking up answers to problems; one of the best techniques to debug is to Google the error message and work from there. Certain problems arise when approximately 100 people try to connect to a small network. Down it went, at around 2pm the WiFi began to deteriorate. Rebooting the system did little to fix the problem.
Even more depend on power, to keep their laptops running, or to power their desktops and monitors. Ansir had the outlets, but not the breakers. Within an hour of the event, we tripped the breaker for all the outlets in the main workspace. We had to go deep into the electrical room to find the breaker, but to our luck we were able to restore power and it would remain on for the remainder of the event.

Food and Sponsors

Lunch was provided by STACKED Restaurants, they provide a unique ordering experience, based on their iPad ordering system. You only pay for what you want. Dinner was from Papa Johns and paid for by Mt. Sac (San Antonio) College. The Midnight Snack, Breakfast and Drinks were provided by Cyber United, a leading security firm, which also provides space to startups. Breakfast, Einstein’s Bagels, was loved by everyone, especially after a long night of coding.

Winners

Code Day is different from many large-scale hackathons, like PennApps or MHacks, as there are no large prizes; only laser-cut trophies and a round of applause. CodeDay is more about the process of getting there, rather than the final product itself.

Winning doesn’t represent that you are the best, it represents that you have passion and the courage to step outside of your comfort zone. It starts at kickoff, pitching your idea, and it is persistent through the event, climaxing during presentations when you get to show off what you did.

Top Overall

The top prize went to team “Username2” and their app “Dream Develop”. Dream Develop sought to connect creators and developers through a simple interface. Ideas would be proposed by the “Dreamers” and then made into reality by the “Developers”. The judges liked the story behind the app and the balance between team size and experience. The mix of genders was a big plus, “This is the future,” said Jerry, the judge who gave out the Top Overall award.

Best Game

This prize is given to the second place in the game category. Team “Athenix” was composed of 7th graders who put together a game called “PuddiPuddi” – The adventures of a pudding cup and his quest to avoid the spoon monster who wanted to eat him.
The judges were impressed by the level of completion in the game and the originality and creativity. They also didn’t use a game engine which furthermore impressed the judges.

Best App

Team Collaboardtive created an Online, Interactive white board. The interface was clean and easy to use “I would start using that tomorrow,” said Judge Cordell, the judge who gave the award to the team. They found inspiration in the lack of whiteboards accessible to them at the event. They fought through the terrible WiFi and made it work in the end.

0-60 (Special)

Every year there are a few special awards, given to teams that didn’t quite make it, but still deserve to be recognized for their work. The “Financial Trackers” had the biggest team by far, and half of them had little to no knowledge of programming before the event. Their final product was not perfectly complete, but they had preparations to implement many additional feature; had we given them an additional day, they would have surely won the Top Overall Prize. The judges recognized their willingness to help other teams and how many people they got into programing.

Most Innovative (Special)

Trevor, the winner of the Most Innovative award built a physics simulator that replicated gravity in a system, modeling planets and other bodies and their interaction with on another. He didn’t use any game engines, which impressed the judges. The app clearly demonstrated the principles and although there were a few bugs in the collisions, the results were amazing. He worked alone, and didn’t complain about the lack of internet, if he had a graphic artist on his team, the app would have been near perfect.

Special Thanks to…

Our Judges: Jerry, Emmanuel, Bob, and Cordell

Our Local Organizers: Ayesha, Aaroh, and TJ

Our Venue Sponsor: Ansir Innovation Center

Hope to see you at CodeDay Winter – February 14-15

CodeDay - Spring 2014

Mon, 26 May 2014 16:15:55 +0000

Codeday is a programming marathon that took this weekend at 23 locations across the nation. I was part of the organizer team for the San Diego CodeDay, which was hosted at CyberHive.

The doors opened at 11 and shortly there after a slow trickle of people began to come in. The event began at noon with the kickoff where the sponsors were introduced and the event details were discussed. A game of Rock, Paper, Scissors got everyone excited and ready to pitch their ideas. Several ideas were pitched, ranging from the revival of old games to a device that would help get your cat home with lasers. After a short period, definite team began to emerge and each team went to their own little area. Lunch was provided by Landini Pizzeria. The teams began to program their various ideas, and as the night approached, many teams moved inside until only a few remained outside.

The Outside Patio at around 8

They too would later move inside.

Dinner was provided by Papa John’s Pizza, and the coders were quite pleased. We then progressed to Team Photos after feeding time was over.

]

The teams worked through the night and were hardly disturbed by our frequent visits to take photos or to ask how they were doing.

The Midnight Snack helped keep people awake, but there was no helping them at 4 AM when people crashed. There were people sleeping everywhere. And TJ, Tyler and Myself made it our mission to wake them. TJ Horner used the development tools on His Chromecast to replace the text and Images that were displayed when I cast music via the Play Music app on my phone, it was that time in the morning.

Bodies Everywhere

HueHueHueHue

Nick Cage

Amongst our laughing, nobody woke up. Most people woke up at around 6 and we went down to the harbor for a short 2-3 mile morning walk.

In front of the Star of India

Breakfast arrived shortly after from the Einstein Bros. There was a mad dash of coding as the 2 hour warning was announced.

At 9:45AM the Judges made their rounds and presentations followed at around 10:45 presentations began. The judges faced a tough deliberation, and the awards were given as listed below.

Awards:
Best Game: Team Adrevenue – Tower Defense with Ads

Best App: Benrud – Nova Launcher Theme

Best Overall: Super 72

Most Fun: Team Hot – High School Sim

0-60 Award: Those Programmer Dudes – Shoot the Squirrel

This event was a blast, and everyone who was there had a lot of fun. The Organizers: Aaroh, Ankit, Achi, and Myself Thank the Sponsors and Attendees for supporting CodeDay and StudentRND.

The Organizer Team