Texas hackathon to create sustainability solutions
As a part of a worldwide tour, Cleanweb, an environmentally oriented information technology nonprofit organization, will be hosting the Texas Cleanweb Hackathon Sept. 21-23 in Duncan Hall.
Rice University adjunct professor of entrepreneurship Bryan Hassin (Lovett '01) is serving as the co-lead organizer for the Cleanweb Hackathon in Texas. According to Hassin, who received his master's degree from Rice in 2002, the main goal during the first day of the conference will be to pitch ideas and assemble teams. The second day will involve the "hacking" portion and further problem-solving. On the third day, the final products will be pitched to a public forum that includes global media coverage. Hassin said the format of the conference will allow natural collaboration.
"In the end, the question is not how we combine [people]," Hassin said. "We just drop them all in a bowl together, and it's a stir-the-pot type of mentality."
Hassin said he intentionally scheduled the hackathon so it would not interfere with home football games at the University of Texas or Texas A&M University. One hundred people are expected to attend the Cleanweb hackathon. Hassin said the conference will bring together Rice students and other students around Texas as well as workers from the Houston area, including engineers from NASA and public servants from the Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County.
"Our intent for this is not to be Rice-only, but for Rice to host an event that draws people and students from Rice but also students from other schools like A&M and UT," Hassin said. "The objective is to put people with varied backgrounds and skill sets at different points in their career together because that kind of diversity usually breeds some really innovative approaches."
Hassin said there was motivation to bring the hackathon to Houston because the city is already known for industry and has the potential to become known for entrepreneurship as well.
The hackathon aims to create a collaborative atmosphere for business professionals, software developers and designers to solve sustainability issues using new technologies. Cleanweb hackathons will later be hosted in cities such as San Francisco, Boston, New York City and Paris.
"Houston is very much a big business town," Hassin said. "Large companies are headquartered here, not only in the energy space, but also in several other industries, but it's not really thought of as a high tech town. But, when we look around, we find that talent is everywhere."
Hassin said he hopes the hackathon will allow new connectivity between employees who previously worked solely for their companies.
"One of the challenges the Houston entrepreneurial ecosystem faces is many of the software developers, graphic designers and web designers are spread all out working for these large companies, and none of them really work with each other," Hassin said. "We're hoping that by bringing all this talent together in one place over the course of a weekend, we can foster some connectivity and help those talented resources connect and maybe have greater abilities to branch out and do something entrepreneurial themselves."
Students of all majors can attend the hackathon after paying a $20 registration fee. Hassin said the main aim for the hackathon is to create solutions to practical problems involving all environmental industries.
"Over the course of a weekend, [the purpose is] to get innovative software applications that address sustainability questions: things that might help in the world of water, energy, transportation, materials or storage," Hassin said. "We do at least have now several Cleanweb hackathons that have happened in other cities with consistently really interesting ... web and mobile apps, and we really hope similarly interesting ideas will be generated at Rice."
Hassin said the decision to host the hackathon at Rice came mostly from its academic reputation and innovative outlook. He said he hopes the hackathon exposes the innovation that happens on the Rice campus between students and faculty to the Houston and global communities.
"A place like Rice really has all the raw materials to generate incredible new products or ventures," Hassin said. "The challenge is really just getting them out of the more academic perspective [and] the more basic research to a practical mindset of how can we actually build a business around this and launch it into something really scalable and world-changing."
Will Rice College junior Veronica Saron serves as a marketer for the hackathon at Rice. She said she initially became interested in entrepreneurship through a three-day startup event held at Rice last year and said the hackathon will go a long way to promoting her passion for entrepreneurship and inspiring computer scientists to create.
"We want to get the people who are talented enough to code and have them go forth and manifest that vision," Saron said. "I really believe in empowering that, and down the line empowering the people who bring it into the market and actually make it a viable product."
Brown College sophomore Sam Tormey also serves as a marketer for the hackathon. He said he initially became interested in becoming involved due to his own research into behavioral science.
"The science out there for changing people's behavior is incredible and very powerful," Tormey said. "That, combined with a knowledge of the state of our environment, can create a lot of motivation to use behavioral science to fix environmental problems."
Tormey said he plans to pitch an idea for a trash can to be implemented at Rice that displays the weight of the trash inside to inform students about food waste. He said he sees large potential for the hackathon.
"We're at the vanguard of world-saving, money-making potential," Tormey said. "There's never been this much data, never been this much cheap computing power, and we're at Rice, where there's a plethora of really creative thinkers and hardworking thinkers. There's actually a chance to help the world in a weekend, and that's really phenomenal to me."
Saron said she is excited to see the collaboration between coders and more practically minded people in implementing a project like Tormey's trash can.
"The coders will look at data sets and figure out how they can organize that data information, but somebody like me who doesn't know how to code will ask how that information will be displayed and how we want it to work," Saron said. "Do we want it to be an app and for people to see it on their phone? What would be more impactful: one big screen or just a screen by the trash can?"
Hassin said he hopes the hackathon exposes Rice students to the field of entrepreneurship and encourages them to think differently about their education.
"Rice tends to bring together very smart people who are often very ambitious but who think very much inside the hedges," Hassin said. "Our objective with this event is really to provide an opportunity for people to work on something that is really meaningful, to transcend the boundaries of Rice by rubbing shoulders with some of the best that Texas has to offer and to work on solutions to some of the world's greatest challenges. I think that's an incredibly meaningful experience for students, one that I wish I had when I was a student there."
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