ID Hack, a 24-hour hackathon with a focus on international development, will be held at Tufts from Friday at 4 p.m. until Saturday at 4 p.m., according to organizer Morgan Babbs, a senior.
The event is the result of collaboration between Tufts, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University, Babbs said.
The event differs from an ordinary hackathon -- a 24-hour event during which programmers gather to build individual projects over night -- because ID Hack requires participants to choose from a list of 10 project ideas that have been put forth by sponsors, according to organizer James Downer, a senior.
“We’ve worked really hard this time around, this semester, to work with NGOs, intergovernmental organizations and some private sector companies to kind of source problems in international development and then pitch those problems along with the associative data sets to people,” Downer said.
Babbs explained that international development involves improving aspects of economic or social well-being, such as environmental conditions in emerging markets and developing countries, economic growth, poverty elimination, human development or education.
According to organizer Sam Purcell, a senior, there will be a networking session at the beginning of the event so participants can meet sponsor companies before the hacking begins.
“We’re collecting resumes from all the attendees, so anyone who comes and brings a resume will get their resume sent to top tech companies and NGOs all over the country,” Purcell said.
The event is unique because of its social international development theme, which combines the field of computer science with that of social science, Babbs said.
“It’s an exciting event because it really merges two totally different fields because traditionally, obviously, hackathons are [for] people who study computer science, and while it is harder to get people who have a strictly international development background, or an IR background for example, to partake in this, it kind of shows the bigger picture -- that people need to be educated in technological issues,” she said.
According to Purcell, 600 tickets have been sold, and several cash prizes will be offered to participants.
