Touro GST at ATT&T Hackathon
Author - Husnal Walia
The AT&T Entertainment Hackathon was held on Friday, Aug 10, 2018 at NYC downtown. This hackathon brought together lots of developers, designers and coders in New York who are interested in entertainment and love to code.
Al Doyle, Program Chair of UX/UI and Interaction Design and Digital Media Design program at Touro University’s Graduate school of Technology, served as the Touro GST team lead. Al is a game design professor, teaching artist, gamer and native Brooklynite who likes all things visual, digital, musical and playful.
Al was joined by Pratik Singh and Husnal Walia, both graduate students at Touro University’s Graduate School of Technology. Pratik Singh is a full stack web developer specializing in designing, developing, managing, and hosting web applications using the latest web tools and technologies. He always looks forward to solving challenges using Information Technology. Husnal Walia is a web developer with more than 12 years of financial management work experience in multi-national companies and with global virtual teams. Husnal is a Subject Matter Expert in Oracle & SAP, and is passionate about COBOL programming on IBM Mainframes.
The AT&T Entertainment Hackathon presented prizes for the following 3 categories:
- Best Overall Entertainment App
- Best Next Generation Advertising Solution or 2nd Screen Solution
- Best Video or Game Solution
The judging criteria was evenly divided into the following 4 criteria, each worth 25% of the total score:
- Ability to clearly articulate what your app does
- Originality of idea
- Technical implementation difficulty
- Design and polish of the app/solution
During the hackathon, the Touro Team was augmented with 3 additional members: Lillian Lin, Juliet Fong and Alex Curtis.
Lillian Lin is a UX Designer and founder of The Chef Charette. She came to NYC after designing architecture in Tokyo. Lillian loves food blogging, designing digital experiences, and finding geeky diagrams. Juliet Fong is a Digital Analyst with a background in marketing and advertising, who lives and works in NYC. Originally from California, Lillian loves being in the sunshine and relaxing on the beach. She also has a deep appreciation for art and loves to travel in her spare time. Alex Curtis is a data analyst and consultant with extensive experience with urban planning, transportation and media. He is interested in developing his programming and writing skills in order to be a more effective communicator of science, technology and policy.
The Team presented an idea named DOODLEMATIC, which consists of:
- Draw - Have a package of markers lying on the bottom of your junk drawer? Well, break them out. Markers aren’t just for kids anymore. Release your imagination and draw your very own game using red, blue, green, purple, and black markers. With 3 different types of games to choose from, the choice is yours! Get creative and share your games today!
- Snap - Take a photo of your game in the Doodlematic app!
- Play - Sooner or later your Facebook feed is going to be filled with your friends posting their latest Doodlematic creations. Let them know you’re thinking about them and play their game. You can even rate their game by liking or disliking it. Choose to be an artist or a critic. It’s your choice.
- Share - Maybe creating and playing your game isn’t enough for you. That’s ok. With Doodlematic, you can share your creation on Facebook with your friends and family, challenge them to beat your high score or better yet, create a game of their own.
It was a great experience to work together towards achieving one unified goal. It was fun to meet lots of developers and designers. It improved our networking as well. We were given a brief overview of the hackathon on Friday evening and then, on Saturday morning, we started working on our idea. We worked diligently throughout the day and we were proud of our finished product. Although the Touro Team did not win, it was a great learning and bonding experience for the entire team.