Barracuda and SJSU Hackathon wrap-up

The SJSU 24-Hour Hackathon was last weekend and we all had a great time.

Barracuda has a great tradition with hackathons. We sponsor them several times each year, and co-sponsor larger events such as the recent LAUNCH Hackathon in San Francisco. I asked a couple of our engineers to chat a bit about our role in these hackathons, and here's what I got back:

“As with all these contests, we get a great look at the next generation of talent and a pulse on what's up-and-coming in university development. The students get a good look at Barracuda and a feel for what “crunch time” in the real world feels like. In general, these contests are a huge win/win/win for the students, the University, and Barracuda.” ~BJ Black, Engineering Technical Lead

 

(emphasis & link mine)

“It's great to see a big room full of students feel so enthusiastic about using what they've learned on something practical. It definitely shows that we're looking in the right places for new talent.” ~Kevin Chang, Engineer

At this particular event we had 120 students from the disciplines of Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Software Engineering, and a variety of others. Of those 120, 73 students survived the Hackathon for the entire 24 hours. 26 teams competed in the final.

Here's a blogger-modified version of the rules for this specific competition:

The game consists of a series of hands. Each hand may result in:

• A point being awarded to either one or zero players
• Ending the game due to an accepted challenge and a player winning the hand
• Ending the game due to one player accumulating enough points.

….. (blah blah blah) …..

During the initial phase of the contest, the contest server will continuously match up players that are connected to the server and play them against each other using the rules specified above. The players will be ranked on an ongoing basis using a scoring system similar to the one used by the chess community.

In the final hour of open play, the game scheduling algorithm will stop taking into account whether or not you are connected, and all participating teams will be forced to play. If you are not online when you are scheduled to play, you will simply lose.

At the end of that hour, the scheduler will be turned off, and the standings at that point will be used to seed the final single elimination tournament. At this point you must at least be connected, or you will not have a place in the final standings.

…. (yip yap) ….

And then the team that gets enough of the right wins in the right places wins the game.

Our winners were Team spartans (team name is all lower case)

And Team Go4It was the first husband and wife team to place in a Barracuda hackathon:

Team spartans also used the opportunity to demonstrate an educational Android App they are creating. Carpe diem, spartans!!

If you'd like to see more of the event, check out our Copy gallery here.

Want to chat with us and make sure you're informed of the next hackathon? Connect with us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter or Google +. Check out our videos on YouTube

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