Tufts' first MiniHackathon, sponsored by the technology company Evernote, will take place today and give computer science students an opportunity to build their ideas using Evernote's programming interface.
The event is a six?hour marathon during which students will undertake a series of programming and design challenges in pursuit of prizes. Each student who participates will receive Evernote Premium software for the fall semester.
Evernote and the university have collaborated to organize the competition, according to Lecturer of Computer Science Ming Chow (E '02).
The MiniHackathon is unrelated to last year's student?run Hackathon and will be hosted solely by Evernote, according to Evernote Senior Web?Developer Chris Traganos.
During the Hackathon last spring, students were able to use whichever programming interface they desired. The event was student?run and co?sponsored by companies such as Evernote, Microsoft, Crashlytics, GitHub, Thoughtbot and the New England Venture Capital Association.
More restrictions will be in place for the MiniHackathon, and the projects that students build will have to communicate with Evernote software, Traganos said.
"You've got to use Evernote API, Evernote libraries," he said. "You can build whatever you want for the iPhone, for Androids, for the web, for another language, but it's going to have to be something to do with note taking."
Chow explained that finding great programmers is a difficult task but that Evernote is up to the challenge.
"The recession did a good job of weeding out the people who didn't belong in the field, but now we're in a situation where it's just so hard to find good talent," Chow said. "We don't produce enough engineers and high?tech folks."
Tufts has been very successful in developing computer programmers and web designers, according to Traganos.
"When it comes to looking for great talent and great engineers, Tufts has a great Computer Science Department," Traganos said. "We've hired some Tufts students, so we are definitely familiar with the [computer science] group."
In addition to hosting this event, Evernote will also be presenting at the Tufts Career Fair tomorrow and is looking to recruit Tufts students with computer science experience, according to Traganos.
"People who are participating in this MiniHackathon will likely wind up with nice job offers this spring," Traganos said. "This trip is really focused on finding great talent."
The student?run Hackathon last year was very successful, according to Alden Keefe Sampson, a senior majoring in computer science and one of the event's organizers.
"I was especially impressed with what the younger people, especially freshmen and sophomores, were able to do in that period [of 24 hours]," Keefe Sampson said.
Traganos hopes that the MiniHackathon will attract computer science students of the same caliber as those who took part in the Hackathon last April.
"We were pretty impressed by the quality and the level of code the students created," Traganos said. "Three computer science students won the Evernote prize, [and] we actually flew them out to Silicon Valley to our big Evernote conference to present what they built."
According to Keefe Sampson, he and his friends are looking to host another Hackathon event, tentatively scheduled for early next February.
The Evernote MiniHackathon will take place today in room 012 of the Mayer Campus Center from 4 to 10 p.m. and is expected to draw about 75 students, Traganos said.
