by Tyna Callahan | Aug 20, 2017 | Meetups & Events
Congratulations to the Zenko 42 Hackathon Winners! All 11 teams put in great efforts, and the projects at this hackathon were outstanding! In the end, the judges chose:
Team ft_gcp takes first!
1st Place: ft_gcp
Team ft_gcp built a client that allows S3 to interface with Google, so users can push data to the Google cloud and manage it using Zenko and S3. Team members Alexander Chan, Tom Zhou and Min Kim did an impressive job! Congratulations!! more about team ft_gcp
2nd Place: Jeff-Tech
Team Jeff-Tech, Joseph Eftekhari, Salim Salaues and Hanu Prateek Kunduru, integrated Zenko with the hot new file system, IPFS. By building a Zenko stack into IPFS, they will enable yet another venue for Zenko’s multi-cloud power—leveraging the peer-to-peer distributed file system across connected computers. more about team Jeff-Tech
3rd Place: Video
The team’s Wiley Debs, Andie Phan and Robert Passafaro built an automated video transcoder with Zenko Backbeat and the HandBreak open source video transcoder to transcode video automatically into all of the required formats for consumption from multiple devices. more about team Video
Meet the judges
Congratulations, all, on some incredible ideas and great work! We truly enjoyed spending the week with you.
by Tyna Callahan | Aug 17, 2017 | Meetups & Events
Zenko++ is Sean Jones, Lijun Wang, Can Yildirim and Aaron Hunt
The Zenko++ team is using Zenko to connect to the Google cloud. Their application feeds data to Zenko so that Zenko can send data to Google via an AWS S3 interface. The team’s Lijun Wang, Can Yildirim, Sean Jones and Aaron Hunt wanted to make an easy way to feed data to Google Cloud.
Originally from China, Lijun earned a Bachelor’s degree in journalism from Bohai University there, and then studied accou nting after coming to the U.S. about eight years ago. She learned about the 42 school via social media, and joined its first U.S. campus students in September of 2016. This is her forst hackathon – she’s ecited to earn a Zenko sticker!
Can (a Turkish name that’s pronounced Jon) is a California native. He was attending community college for his GE degree and taking computer science classes when he read an article about 42’s programming school. He was immediately interested and excited about this wildly alternative program. Fortunately for him, his father was really supportive, and encouraged him to pursue it. Can took part in the very first evaluation program (Piscine) for the U.S. school, and joined its first class after the Piscine. This isn’t his first hackathon (but we’re hopeful that it’s his favorite).
Sean was born and raised in Texas, then found his way to Hungary to go to theatre school there. When he returned to the U.S. he went back to Mechanical Engineering, something he had developed an interest in in high school, doing robotics competitions. He decided to pursue programming because, while he could build a great robot, others “told” it what to do. He wanted to be able to do that. It’s another piece of the puzzle for Sean. His brother-in-law read about the school, and encouraged Sean to give it a shot. It sounded too good to be true, but he came (and yes, it’s true) and he’s enjoyed his first year of hacking.
Aaron was studying electrical engineering in New York, but wasn’t loving it. He left that program and got a good full-time job as an electrician. Great job, but he couldn’t see a future in it, so he decided to go back to school. He took a programing course and just loved it. Looking forward, focusing on that seemed to him to be a great idea. When he heard about 42, he took a month off from work to join a Piscine, even though the whole idea of 42 seemed a bit unreal. He says that the tuition-free program with no-cost dorm living space were hard enough to believe, but he had a really hard time convincing friends and family that the program’s goal wasn’t just to turn him into a profitable coding machine for them. He’s impressed by the fact that what he develops while a student there, he owns. The school does not assume rights to a student’s IP.
by Tyna Callahan | Aug 17, 2017 | Meetups & Events
Team Los Billanos: EugenioRodriguez, Abraham Nieto, Jose Ramon Aleman and Gerardo Solis
Los Billanos is building a graphical user interface for UTAPI. The team’s four members Eugenio Rodriguez, Abraham Nieto, Jose Ramon Aleman and Gerardo Solis are working with the goal of making it easier to get a view of the status of data at a glance by displaying it graphically as an alternative to the standard text-based terminal view.
Eugenio graduated from Penn State University wits a B.S. in Engineering Science, with a focus on nanotechnology. After college, he returned to his home in the Dominican Republic, but decided to come back to the U.S., this time to San Francisco, where his sister lives. His plan was to find a good bootcamp and learn to program, but he heard about 42, and since he was already in the area, he decided to give 42 a try. He started the program in November, having done his Piscine in October. This is his first full hackathon.
Abraham is from strawberry country; Watsonville, California. He holds a B.S. in Digital Media from U.C. Santa Cruz, but, after he finished it, he decided that he wanted to be an engineer. He supported himself with odd jobs while he self-studied Web development, but he wanted to go deeper. The program at 42 gave him just that. He started in September, 2016,, and has put all of his energy into learning to program. He’s done a couple of San Francisco hackathons before and a Game Jam at Facebook.
Jose Ramon Studies Informatics Engineering at Latin University of Panama, and earned a B.S. in Mechatronics Engineering. He has worked as a freelance Web designer, but entered the program at 42 because he wanted to go more in-depth. He actually learned about 42 from a friend with whom he came to the month-long Piscine (a vetting period). His friend enjoyed the Piscine as much as Jose Ramon enjoyed it, but ended up not staying because it was too difficult for him to change course at the time. Jose Ramon, though, was ready and able, so he started in November, 2016. He has done a few other hackathons: a Space App challenge in Panama and two others at 42.
Gerardo is from Mexico City, where he attended Instituto Politecnico Nacional and earned a degree in Engineering and Computer Science. He found 42 on Facebook, and knew immediately that he wanted to be there. He sees quite clearly what a great opportunity it presents. This is just his second hackathon; the first was also here at the school.
by Tyna Callahan | Aug 17, 2017 | Meetups & Events
Team ft_gcp: Tom Zhou, Alexander Chan and Min Kim
Team ft_gcp is building a client that allows S3 to interface with Google, so users can push data to the Google cloud and manage it using Zenko and S3. Team members Alexander Chan, Tom Zhou and Min Kim are just putting the finishing touches on their work.
From Los Angeles, Alexander has a B.S. in Computer Science, but had been working as an accountant. Not finding that especially fulfilling, he decided to go back to tech, and learning to program seemed like a good choice. He happen upon 42 school when browsing the Internet and thought it might be a good choice for him. He started in November. He’s a hackathon veteran – he won 2nd place in a Motorola hackathon.
Tom is from Massachusetts, but was working in the Bay Area, for a biotech company, when he decided to pivot to 42. He holds a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Washington University in St. Louis. Working at the biotech company doing lab work and data analysis, he was interested in programming, and thought that might be a way that he could have more impact. He had looked at bootcamps, but in addition to being expensive, most also seemed to focus on Web development, which wasn’t what he was looking for. He heard about 42 from a friend, so decided to give it a try, and he loved (and loves) it!
Min came to the U.S. just 6 months ago, from Korea. In Korea, he had been managing a restaurant, prior to which he spent a year in the army. His brother lives here, and told him about 42, so Min went about doing what he needed to do to make it happen. He’s currently a student at two schools: Ohlone Community College, where he studies computer science, and 42, where he’s learning to program.
by Tyna Callahan | Aug 17, 2017 | Meetups & Events
Big D(ata): Zack Smith
Zack Smith is Big D(ata), and he’s working to build a streaming log to make managing large amounts of streaming data easier. Rather than writing individual pipelines, his program manages data flow to dependent processes so that the dependent systems (consumers) know when the data they need to act on is available.
Having worked as an economist doing data analysis, Zack knows the importance of efficient data management. Originally from Pittsburgh, Zack attended Carnegie Mellon University, where he earned a B.S. in Economics. Working in the field of economics, though, he found that he was frustrated by working on “old stuff” and wanted to be able to create things—to invent. He thought that programming would enhance his ability to do that. Initially, he looked at Bootcamps, but found them to be costly. He came across 42 in his searches, and decided to invest a month in deciding if it was right for him, so took time off from work to do the Piscine. That was almost a year ago, and Zack spent that year here in Silicon Valley. And he’s staying. He’s finishing up at the school soon, but definitely wants to stay to work in the tech hub and remain in this exhilarating and inventive community.
