Innovation is thriving at Sheridan! More than 100 students from across Ontario recently gathered at Trafalgar Campus for a hackathon organized by Sheridan’s student-run Hackademics Club.
Hackville – a 36-hour hackathon that took place from February 8 to 10 – was the first student-organized event of its kind at Sheridan. A hackathon is a large, often days-long event, in which a number of designers, developers and business analysts work intensively together on software or hardware projects.
Hackville was not only an opportunity for the 24 teams to work against the clock using their creativity, problem-solving and technical skills, but the solutions put forward have potential for real-world impact as the focus was addressing social isolation experienced by older adults.
The organizing committee approached the Centre for Elder Research to partner on the event. The Centre provided information and support to the teams as they created their solutions. Christina Weng, Hackademics president and third-year Bachelor of Interaction Design student said: “We don’t typically design for older adults, so our club felt compelled to focus our attention on a real-world problem that would impact a growing segment of our population.
Congratulations to the winning team, Connectify, who won a grand prize of $1,000 from event sponsor AGE-WELL. Their solution aims to use augmented reality to display interesting real-world objects as 3D models that could be explored from the comfort of one’s home.