Our Computing Society (CompSoc) organised their first Hackathon on January 13-14, 2018.
The organisers, left to right: Hugh Wells, Alex Clarke, Dulcie Jackson, Dom Hall, Chris Melville and Kal Chok.
With just under 90 people from 20 different universities taking part, and over 20 projects created in 24hrs, it was the largest event ever organised by Compsoc.
The theme of the Hackathon was 'open data' – we saw Alexa Apps, cryptocurrency smart contracts, a healthcare cost mapping tool, and many other projects, all pulling from free and open data sources.
Over the weekend, hackers produced 18 superb projects that were then judged by a panel consisting of two academics from the Department of Computer Science (Giorgios Koutsoukos and Nuno Barreiro), the CompSoc Women's Ambassador (Dulcie Jackson), James Cattell from Defra and David Durant from the Greater London Authority. The project "Alpaca" was chosen as the overall winner as it demonstrated some very exciting technology as well as a solid use case and room to expand in the future. Several other prizes were distributed.
The event was supported by the Department of Computer Science at Royal Holloway, Github, and Major League Hacking (MLH).
Hugh Wells led the CompSoc team that took charge of the (superb) organisation. You can read more about the Royal Hackaway in his blog.
