.png)
Wish you could hack cancer? Coders Vs. Cancer launched their first hackathon 9/11-13 and focused on hacking breast cancer prevention.
Wish you could hack cancer? Coders Vs. Cancer launched their first hackathon 9/11-13 and focused on hacking breast cancer prevention.
About 1 in 8 American women will be diagnosed with breast cancer within her life. Breast cancer is the second most deadly cancer women face in America. Breast cancer is a real threat for women across the globe and Coder Vs. Cancerused their first hackathon to unite innovators with a worthy cause.
The best part of a hackathon is bringing people together for a common cause. The Coders Vs. Cancer hackathon took place in New York, though coders could create teams and work remotely. The goal was to bring social innovators together to create something amazing. They succeeded.
The hackathon had a 100% attendance rate, with over 50 hackers present at the hackathon's physical New York location. Coders Vs. Cancer did open the hackathon up to hacker teams across the country. Only 1 team joined and worked remotely, but it will be great to see how the hackathon's remote hacker presence grows with the hackathon.
EWish you could hack cancer? Coders Vs. Cancer launched their first hackathon 9/11-13 and focused on hacking breast cancer prevention.
About 1 in 8 American women will be diagnosed with breast cancer within her life. Breast cancer is the second most deadly cancer women face in America. Breast cancer is a real threat for women across the globe and Coder Vs. Cancerused their first hackathon to unite innovators with a worthy cause.
The best part of a hackathon is bringing people together for a common cause. The Coders Vs. Cancer hackathon took place in New York, though coders could create teams and work remotely. The goal was to bring social innovators together to create something amazing. They succeeded.
The hackathon had a 100% attendance rate, with over 50 hackers present at the hackathon's physical New York location. Coders Vs. Cancer did open the hackathon up to hacker teams across the country. Only 1 team joined and worked remotely, but it will be great to see how the hackathon's remote hacker presence grows with the hackathon.
Each of Coders Vs. Cancer’s 12 hackathon teams took a different approach depending on their skill sets and experiences. The hackers were a mixture of designers, developers, researchers, data scientists, students, and more. Some had never been to a hackathon before.
Coders Vs. Cancer were able to bring together an amazing group of social innovators for a cause they all believed in. Callie Leone, organizer for Coders Vs. Cancer, attributed the hackathon’s success partly to the fact that they’re treating breast cancer as a human problem.
Coders Vs. Cancer was able to mobilize over 50 innovators to donate their weekend to create solutions.
Coders Vs. Cancer was able to inspire everyone from small startups to large corporations to sponsor the hackathon. JP Morgan sponsored the $10K grand prize.
The winning team was Circly. Circly focuses on helping people get a better understanding of how at-risk they are for breast cancer. They offer an easy to understand look at how you can help prevent breast cancer. Most people know someone who has been diagnosed with breast cancer or have been diagnosed themselves. Circly also places emphasis on creating a network or circle of support for breast cancer prevention.
Callie Leone: The team work, the collaboration is inspiring. Everybody was there for a common reason. Everybody learned something and walked away asking, “How can we do this again?”
For me, it was seeing how people come together. They don't necessarily be an expert at cancer. They don't necessarily have to be a doctor to create change.
Seeing people step up to something, put in so much of their effort, and create something that may move forward. That was wonderful.
Our top 3 teams at least are going to be moving forward and will hopefully become companies. We're excited to help them along the way as they grow. We believe in what they're doing. We're hosting a follow-up event soon for the teams to come back and show how they're doing.
We're still figuring that out. I would like to see hackathons like this occurring regularly. I would like to see us expanding in different cities and then targeting more specific problems. I would like us to work with organizations, especially startups, to bring the ideas that come out of this into reality. I want us to help them grow as they change the market and the way we interact with each other.
We have a saying at gyro, where I work: “There's no creative apartheid.” For the most part, that’s true where I work, but we can do better in general. We can do a better job of breaking barriers and learning from others who have experiences that can make the world better.
A hackathon is a place where, for a short period of time, you’re allowing different experiences, knowledge, and wisdom come together. All this can cultivate a change that can actually happen.
Make sure to check out the Coders Vs. Cancer website and follow them on Twitter and Facebook so you don't miss any upcoming events and hackathons!