FULL RECAP TeenTechSF Civic Hackathon @TheMixatSFPL

On Nov 14&15, TeenTechSF organized the Bay Area's first student-led Civic Hackathon at The Mix at SFPL, San Francisco's new student-designed Digital Resource Center & Maker Space! An at-capacity crowd of 100+ students, mentors, speakers, workshop leaders, and volunteer organizers took over The Mix at San Francisco's main library to develop tech solutions to civic problems. Students came from a diverse range of Bay Area school and as far away as Lake Tahoe and Los Angeles. Two-thirds were first-time hackers and the winning team was an all female group of first-time hackers from five different schools who met and bonded over the course of the weekend at the TTSF Civic Hack. Visit the TeenTechSF website and Facebook page for video highlights and photos!

Support the winning Bay Area teams at the TeenTech GLOBAL Youth Summit & World Pitch @Salesforce HQ on Dec 5th: FREE REGISTRATION - SPACE LIMITED!

Cathy Cormier, Librarian and The Mix Program Manager, Marc Robert Wong, TeenTechSF Founder and Global Chair, and special speakers Krista Canellakis from the San Francisco Mayor's Office of Civic Innovation and Ashu Desai, Co-founder of Y Combinator-funded MakeSchool gave the opening remarks. Workshop leader Dion Larson, MakeSchool Curriculum Engineer, transformed students from game players to game designers, teaching a hands-on workshop on the coding principles behind the popular new Pokemon "Gotta Catch 'Em All" game. Yennie Lee, IDEO Impact Manager, led a workshop titled “Learn to think like an IDEO Designer,” sharing the thinking behind design thinking and the magic of multicolored post-its. Camille Colbert, TeenTechSF President-Elect, demonstrated how to use MIT's visual drag-and-drop App Inventor platform in her workshop for first-time hackers. Mentors from UC Berkeley, Stanford, and Yale helped students take their ideas from dream to reality, and everyone got a chance to do a three-minute elevator pitch Sunday afternoon in The Mix's performance space.

During the closing ceremonies at the SF Main Library's Koret Auditorium, a crowd of family, friends, fellow students, and mentors applauded as semi-finalists and best first-time hacker and best female hacker were recognized. Finalists from the three top teams pitched their projects for the win to a judging panel including Marc Robert Wong (Stanford student and TeenTechSF Founder and Global Chair), Austin Tsang (UC Berkeley student), and Mary Abler (community organizer and Teen Librarian at The Mix).

Semi-Finalist Teams:

Project Food for Granted: David Chung - Marina MS, Sam Lem - Town MS

Project Homeless 520: Anna He - Independence HS, Erica Kong - Lowell HS

Project VoteFor.US: Brandon Fong - Lowell HS, Caleb Kahookele - Lowell HS, Chris Lim - Lowell HS, Jeremy Lin - Lowell HS

Finalist Teams:

3rd Place Project Flyer: Ronald Liu - Galileo HS, Jimmy Qiu - Lowell HS, Robert Shi - Lowell HS

2nd Place Project Do That Homework: Ben Ha - Bellarmine HS, Alex Shortt - Bellarmine HS

1st Place Project EduVoice: Amethyst Baumgartner - Lick-Wilmerding HS, Tania Kiryukhin - St John of SF HS, Stacy Phan - San Leandro HS, Shreya Puli - Dougherty Valley HS, Kaysie Yu - International HS

Mentor Save: Project Open Door: Polina Florova - Campolindo HS, Anna He - Independence HS, Jarrett Mao - International HS

Best First-Time Hacker: Drew Pilkinton - S Tahoe MS & Project School Lunch: Chloe, Jordan, and Justin Duong - Alice Fong Yu MS

Best Female Hacker: Ivy Chen - Cupertino HS & Project Wildfire: Chase Bishop - Los Altos HS, Ben Champion - Cupertino HS

All teams are welcome to post their project and pitch videos on the TeenTechSF Devpost platform. The three finalist teams: EduVoice, Do That Homework!, and Flyer will join teams from across the US and around the world at the TeenTech GLOBAL Youth Summit to compete in the 2015 World Pitch. Project Open Door received a “mentor save” and will be allowed to enter the global “wild card” category to compete for a place in the World Pitch finals among the global team category.

Please join us on December 5th at the TeenTech GLOBAL Youth Summit & World Pitch @Salesforce HQ! Registration at: TeenTechGLOBAL-YouthSummit-2015.eventbrite.com

Many thanks to our partners, The Mix at SFPL, and the student leaders from TeenTechSF and the San Francisco Public Library Board of Advising Youth (SFPL BAY), and to our speakers, mentors, workshop leaders, and sponsors and supporters from:

  • SF Mayor's Office of Civic Innovation
  • SF Board of Supervisors
  • SF Youth Commission
  • SF Youth Works
  • Friends of the San Francisco Public Library
  • Youth Service America and the “Summer of Creativity” grant
  • Peace Corps
  • Microsoft
  • IDEO
  • MakeSchool
  • Bay Area Video Coalition
  • Blue Bear School of Music
  • Technovation
  • Girls Who Code
  • Girls in Tech
  • Bay Area Teen Science
  • The Resilience Challenge
  • Project_Chemistry
  • International School of the Peninsula
  • International High School
  • UC Berkeley
  • Stanford
  • Yale