News: Facebook Chicago Hackathon

Facebook Chicago Hackathon

On November 1, the Chicago Connectory hosted Facebook’s first-ever Chicago Hackathon. Facebook’s Chicago Hackathon brought together developers, UX designers, and others to create solutions focused on gaming and entertainment, productivity and utility, and social cohesion.

The event kicked-off with a brief presentation highlighting Facebook’s perspective on engaging with developers. How can companies like Facebook best engage with them, enable them, and cater to them? Through Hackathons! It allows developers to connect, not only with each other, but with the ecosystem around them.

The first day of the Hackathon gave participants an overview of the different platforms Facebook has. The participants were also given a presentation on the Facebook Messenger chatbot, SparkAR, and given additional guidance on how to best prepare for judging, project submission, and their presentations.

Day two is where the teams got to work. Using their prior knowledge and the information provided on the first day, the teams of 2-4 participants had the

entire day to create a solution for one of the three categories using at least one of the technologies discussed.

Some of the solutions created included:

· An application that collects data through the messenger about community organizations and events and then automatically creates a PDF poster to share with others

· An icebreaker application that allows people to foster deeper connections by matching them in the messenger based on common interests and opinions on different subjects

Congratulations to winners Anthony Pham, Nazih Kalo, Bowen Bao, and Hoang Son Pham who, in addition to winning Oculus headsets, also won memberships to the Chicago Connectory.

Thank you Facebook Chicago for hosting your first hackathon at the Chicago Connectory!