From experienced designers and engineering students to families and young children, the Princeton community came together for “Code for Princeton” and hacked their way to innovative solutions at the Princeton Public Library on June 6, kicking off the Municipality of Princeton and the Princeton Public Library’s participation in the National Day of Civic Hacking.
In addition to programming classes for children titled “My Robotic Friends” and “Scratch Programming”, the two-day Code for Princeton Civic Hackathon also held a competition for novice and expert hackers using publicly released data, technology and design processes to collaborate on civic projects addressing issues including sustainable energy, transportation and more.
“We need to learn more about the community – to think about how we can address some of the big issues that face our community as well as come up with some practical solutions to the everyday problems that we’re having,” said Claire Ralph, one of the event’s organizers. “The other goal is to have fun. You’re not going to just be building apps over the next couple days, you’re going to be building relationships and building community, and hopefully those are things that will last far beyond the event today.”
Ralph introduced Mike Swift, the event’s keynote speaker and CEO & Co-Founder of Major League Hacking, a student hackathon league with a multinational reach. As a Rutgers graduate, Swift shared with the audience how his business acumen combined with pure chance got him where he is today.
“The interesting thing about hackathons for me is that if you roll back the clock to 2008 … I was not even a programmer, and today I’m standing in front of you having been to hundreds of hackathons, I’ve started two different hackathon-related companies, I live and breathe for developers and I love this stuff,” Swift said. “It is one of my life’s passions and I can’t get enough of it.”
Following the keynote, Princeton Mayor Liz Lampert started the clock for the hackers, who programmed until midnight and began again at 8 a.m. the next day. Hackers submitted their projects on Sunday, demonstrating and pitching their hacks to a panel of judges consisting of Lampert, MongoDB Vice President Andrew Erlichson, Sustainable Jersey program director Lauren Skowronski, Princeton Future Board Member Ralph Widner, Princeton Tech Meetup co-founder Chris Boraski and Sustainable Princeton director Diane Landis.
