Sci-fi themed Hackathon showcases IBM Bluemix cloud platform

At NexCon 3 last April 2 and 3, the ultimate celebration of science fiction and fantasy in the Philippines, high school and college students were challenged to build an app for social good using Bluemix, IBM's open-standards, cloud-based platform for app development.

According to Tom Wagan, external relations lead for IBM Philippines, the best thing about Bluemix is its integration with Watson, the famed AI that not only beat humans in Jeopardy!, but is now being used in cancer treatment, intelligent toys, weather prediction and more.

This Hackathon, dubbed Hack-a-Superpower with Bluemix, was organized in partnership with DevCon Philippines. A sci-fi premise backs the Hackathon by supposing that a crashed alien vessel could harm all living organisms within its impact radius.

Teams of young developers were asked to create an app that could help shape or speed the recovery from such a calamity. A "Teach Me How to Bluemix" session held on the 30th of March explained some of the salient qualities of the platform before development commenced.

There were ten teams consisting of three students each. They had 72 hours to complete a working prototype by April 2. The morning after, they presented their apps to a panel of judges composed of representatives from IBM, Cyberpress, DevCon, and NexCon, but not before a motivational talk from Luis Pineda, President & Country General Manager of IBM Philippines, in which he shared his early days in IBM as a developer and programmer.

The panel of judges included DevCon President Bryan Bibat; Adrian Arcega, co-organizer of NexCon; TJ Dimacali, Science & Technology Editor for GMA News Online and the President  of the IT Journalists Association of the Philippines; Dr. Jay Sabido, R&D Executive at IBM Philippines and Lope Doromal, Chief Technologist at IBM Philippines.

^{Team RAMS' 'Flash Tap'}

The grand prize winner was "Team RAMS" from Asia Pacific College (APC). Their disaster collaboration and chat app called "Flash Tap," provides chat interface accessible to the public and responding agencies to efficiently communicate for disaster coordination. It uses geolocation data to identify the location of chat participants in case of a rescue. Disaster preparedness is addressed through a function that consolidates social media feeds related to a calamity. "Team RAMS" members were Yesha Alfafara, Marc Adrian Jimenez, and Marc Anthony Nares.

^{Team Overknights' 'GeoDATA'} 

The first runner up winners were from the Polytechnic University of the Philippines - Taguig. Known as “Team Overknights”, the students created the “GeoDATA” app which maps events during a disaster and provides SMS notification to relevant individuals and groups. It can also show information on the nearest evacuation sites based on GPS tracking. "Team Overknights" were composed of Ibrahem Sotejo, Renielle Carpio, and Justin Sanorjo.

^{Team Tomas' 'Helplinator'}

The winners of the second runner up spot were "Team Tomas" from the University of Santo Tomas (UST). They created an app called “Helplinator” which features prevention and rescue functions using the natural langue processing of Watson. Users can chat with Watson to identify nearby hospitals, evacuation sites, fire stations, etc. depending on the type of emergency. Its “personal health” feature provides emergency responders a preview of a victims condition prior to rescue or assistance. "Team Tomas" was made up of Joanouh Nathaniel Abonador and Tricia Jasmine Moreno.

The three winning teams pitched their apps and received their awards at the main hall of NexCon. Other participants of the hackathon were from STI College, Adamson University, Far Eastern University, Technological University of the Philippines, Jose Rizal University, and National University. — All photos courtesy IBM Philippines/TJD, GMA News