UHack, held at the University of Miami and put on by the IEEE and ACM chapters on the campus and pictured above, was open to college students throughout South Florida. This year, roughly 65 students attended UH8ack, with more than half of them competing in the hackathon, said Marc Messier and Alain Fontaine, two of the organizers of the annual event. Some students showed up to work on building a robot to compete in the IEEE Southeastcon Hardware Competition. Some attended to learn how to code.
For the 17 teams that took part in the judged contest, the mission was to build an app to improve everyday life. And the winners were...
1st Place: BarHack. The hack was an Android smartphone application that was created with bartenders and bar goers in mind. It reduces the need to wait at a bar by giving customers the option to pay over the phone. More info here. The students on this team were Patrick Poggi, Phillip Ingelmo, and Elliot Lawrence. Prize: $1,000 and other sponsor prizes.
2nd Place: Ultimate Party Playlist that created a custom music playlist in RDIO.com based on musical likes that were extracted from Facebook. This web application makes it easier to find music that everyone at a party would like to listen to. More info here. The students on this team were Rich Marino, Marc Messier, Ana Diez, Zachary Bernheimer, and Benjamin Kaminsky. Prize: $750 and other prizes.
3rd Place: An iPhone/iPad application that allowed users to search for buddies with whom they could go to the gym. The hack also allowed for gym buddies to generate random playlists that best reflect the two's similar music interests. The hack was called Crunch Time and the students on the team were Colin Francis and Samantha Jimenez. More info here. Prize: $500 and other prizes.
Over at The LAB Miami in Wynwood during the same time, PayPal's BattleHack was underway. This is an 11-city global contest for a $100,000 grand prize, and it is the second year Miami has been in the contest. The mission was to build an app for the social good. More than 50 hackers competed on 14 teams. And the winners were ...
1st Place and going to Silicon Valley to compete in the global competition: Team Once, made up of Jose Pimienta, Osniel Gonzalez and Rafael Bonnelly Ricart. Their winning hack was for a savings tool to help families and friends near and far to pool savings and create shared accounts. This was a repeat win for Pimienta and Gonzalez, who were part of a team that won BattleHack last year and represented the city in Silicon Valley in November. In the global contest last year, they came in third place.
2nd Place: The Team One Beard Down won for YOLO for a Cause, an app with that helps make charitable giving fun and edgy through the use of dares. Members of the team were Antonio Rodriguez, Waldemar Figueroa, Javiar Velazquez and Jorge Suarez. This team from NoBox was also a two-time BattleHack winner, as they also took second place last year. You can see their work on yoloforacause.com
3rd Place: Code Together, an app that provides a platform to easily organize or sponsor a hackathon or create teams at the event itself. Members of the team: Deborah Venuti, Gianni D'Alerta, Joshua Martinez and Daniel Vera. You can see their work on codetogether.co
In addition: SendGrid awarded a prize to Team Commotion for an app that helps people with disabilities and Twilio awarded its prize to One Beard Down.
Posted Feb. 23, 2014 (if anyone has winning team pics from UHack, please email to ndahlberg@miamiherald.com)