The Intel Developer Forum (IDF) is Intel’s premier public event to engage with the industry. At this year’s 2013 event in San Francisco will are holding a “Code-for-Good in the Cloud hackathon”. Since IDF attendees do not have a lot time to devote to coding, we have invited three teams to participate: two teams of super-smart college students and one team of seasoned IT professionals, from Intel IT and Pivotal Labs. IDF attendees are invited to stop by, interact with the teams and discuss the learning potential of the hackathon model.
The hackathon learning approach seems to be all the rage. As opposed to a rigid instructor led class with specific exercises, the hackathon allows participants to explore ideas at their own pace, immersing them into technology areas which excite and interest them. Intel’s Code-For-Good program uses this approach to introduce new technology to the next generation of engineers in an academic setting. Intel IT uses a similar approach called “code-a-thons” to expand the skills of its workforce.
Our mini-hackathon at IDF is intended to be fun and good natured. The goal is to develop innovative math apps for middle school students. These apps will be hosted in our IDF private cloud which incorporates Intel Xeon E5 servers, an Open Stack foundation and Intel IT’s Platform as a Service (PaaS), which is based on Cloud Foundry and Iron Foundry open source projects. Apps will be designed to be cloud-aware, including a stateless model, web services approach, massive scaling, and design for failure. In addition, the apps will run across a spectrum of client devices via HTML5 and utilize sensor technology, cross-platform design and Intel HR pedagogical best-practices.
The hackathon will take place on Tuesday, September 10 and Wednesday, September 11 on the 2nd floor of the Moscone, in the Data Center Challenge booth from 11:00 AM to 3:00 PM. We are excited to see what the students and IT professionals produce and what they learn from one another. Come and join us!
- Catherine Spence, Intel IT Enterprise Architect and PaaS Lead