Undergraduate grabs big prize at the Winter Hackathon
By Milverton Wallace*
One of the inspiring stories that came out of the recently concluded Winter Hackathon http://hackathoncentral.com in London was that of first year software engineering student Alejandro Saucedo.
He won the “off the Wall” category, one of the six main categories, for his mobile app, “Lost It”, <http://hackathoncentral.com/winners> a database-driven service to reunite people with their lost property.
He was the first to arrive for the two-day hack. He came bounding into Central Working at 8.00am, a gangly, smiling young man with his hand outstretched, “Hi, I’m Alejandro Saucedo and I’m here for the hackathon”.
Alejandro knew exactly what he wanted to do. He said his idea was to update the business of finding lost property. To those like me who remember the nightmare of dealing with the old Lost and Found office at Baker Street this was an intriguing proposition.
Throughout the morning he attached himself to various groups and tried to get support for his idea, but he got no takers. So by mid-afternoon on Saturday he gave up and declared he’d do it on his own.
At 11 pm he said he had to return to Southampton and I teased him about not being able to last the course, but bright and early next morning he was back, full of energy and ready to rock and roll!
He did get some help from Rob Finean, a senior developer, and advice from Mark Tyers, Senior Developer at the Serious Games Institute, but essentially, the app is his sole creation.
Alejandro is 19 years old, barely 3 months into his degree course at Southampton University. Spanish is his native language, and he speaks fluent English, conversational Mandarin and basic level Portuguese.
A longer, more detailed graphic illustration of “Lost It” is here: http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/iasm1g11/LostItUni/Presentation/index.html.
We think young Alejandro has a bright future in the computing business.
*Milverton Wallace is the organizer of the Winter Hackathon.
Links:
Serious Games Institute <http://www.seriousgamesinstitute.co.uk>
Central Working <http://www.centralworking.com>
