Hack Rice 7 - I WON A THING
And a month and a week later and look who’s back! I need to cut down on meetings, I have no time to code at home or blog. It’s an actual struggle. But that’s my problem, so here’s a quick post about my most successful hackathon.
HackRice 7 was September 22-24 and in Houston, Texas (and for those keeping track at home, the weekend after HackMIT). I flew out for Houston at 7am arriving later that afternoon, got lost on Rice’s (GORGEOUS) campus for about an hour, finally found where I was supposed to register, registered, and then wandered around their career fair/swag zone stocking up on tshirts and fidget spinners.
HackRice had five major “tracks”, (1) Data Science, (2) Environment/Transportation, (3) Design, (4) Healthcare, and (5) Hardware. I chose to work on the Healthcare track which was described as: “Healthcare and computer science are becoming more interwoven every year, and at this HackRice we want you to explore what’s happening at the junction between CS and health. More healthcare-related sponsor companies will be at HackRice this year than in any previous year. We’re working with different groups in the Texas Medical Center to make sure hackers can explore the cutting edge of new health technology at HackRice 7.“
Now, as per usual, positives/negatives and all that stuff. Side note: our project was a diabetes management app, I’m a type-one diabetic, easy choice for an app.
Six-Twelve-Six
https://devpost.com/software/six-twelve-six
Like most chronic diseases, Diabetes requires constant attention and care in order to keep the patient happy, healthy, and living a normal life. Technology can help make this easier. Carb counting when you have access to every food - easy. Seeing trends with simple coloured bar charts - easy. Thus, becoming healthier and getting diabetes under control - easy.
Six-Twelve-Six takes the guesswork out of diabetes management. Included is an easy way to view blood sugar trends, a predicted A1C value, and extensive catalog of food with carb values. Six-Twelve-Six helps the modern diabetic explore their world by making insulin management simple and accurate. “Life Is Sweet” with Six-Twelve-Six!
Positives
The best thing about HackRice was of course that we won, my excellent (more on that later) partner Sriram and I actually won a major prize. Specifically, Texas Childrens' Hospital chose our app as the winner for the Healthcare Track - Patient Engagement award. I even got quoted in the Houston Chronicle:
“A computer science senior at Dalhousie University in Canada and her teammate snagged the patient engagement challenge for developing Six-Twelve-Six, a way for young diabetics to easily track and visualize insulin levels and other health data. "Living alone and going to college by myself I had situations where I was having to do a lot of guess work," Six-Twelve-Six developer Rebecca Ansem(s) said.”
As I mentioned above, Sriram and I worked great together, so much so that we had the main functionality of our app good, built, and mostly working by mid-afternoon Saturday. Saturday night and Sunday morning was then able to be spend on “nice-to-haves” instead of (with most hackathons I go to) “must-haves”. I credit this to it being neither Sriram nor my first hack, and we were both using a language and platform we were familiar with (Java, Android, and then Android Studio to tie everything together).
Negatives
Sriram got stuck in traffic and missed the first thirty-ish minutes of presentations. It worked out ok because I rock that presenters booth but yeah, literally the only downside.
Conclusion
I won a major prize at a major hackathon :D :D Also Rice is too pretty. And Houston is my favorite city in Texas but I still don’t like Texas.
How is this a university building
A+ food, egg (spring?) rolls on point
I have never seen more bagels in one place, ever
Winner, winner, chicken dinner :D