Connect, Build, and Empower organizations to change lives across the world.
Our 3rd annual Opportunity Hack will open at 8:00 a.m. on October 21st.
At Opportunity Hack, you can network, share ideas and build solutions that enable impact and social innovation! Join a team that will hack solutions for any of the problem statements listed by our partnering non-profits!
Check in will be from 8:00 until 9:00. Please note that ONLY THE FIRST 200 will be allowed to enter the door.
At 9:00 we'll have our opening keynote speaker.
Then the fun begins! Our non-profits will all have an opportunity to pitch their ideas to all the participants. We'll be moving this along quickly so that we can move into team building. You can bring a whole team, but if you don't, we're pretty good at facilitating team formation. This is the part of the program that people tend to be the most nervous about, but it all works out. We've done it successfully a number of times and we'll make sure you get hooked up.
9:30 a.m. Non-profits pitch their problem statements to hackers.
11:00 a.m. It's time to get your Hack On! You have from now until 3:00 p.m. on Sunday! We're providing meals and snacks and support around the clock.
3:00 p.m. on Sunday it's time to let the keyboard rest. You'll want to have your prototype and presentation ready for a three minute presentation to the judges with some Q&A. There will be a brief intermission for scoring and then the top teams will be chosen and accolades will flow! This will mark the end of the event and the beginning of the celebration, where we will also provide appropriate supplies.
Detailed Agenda
Saturday (10/21)
- 08:00AM: Doors open for check-in
- 08:10AM: Breakfast
- 09:00AM: Opening ceremony
- 09:30AM: Non-profits pitch their problems to hackers
- 10:30AM: Team formation
- 11:00AM: The Hackathon begins!
- Noon: Lunch is served
- 02:00PM: Submit team details
- 06:00PM: Dinner is served
- HACK THROUGH THE NIGHT
Sunday (10/22)
- Midnight: Pizza served
- 08:00AM:Breakfast is served & Subject matter experts available (3 hours)
- Noon: Lunch is served / I can’t think straight but this tastes awesome!
- 02:00PM: Code checked into GitHub
- 02:45PM: Presentations submitted on DevPost
- 03:00PM: Hackathon ends
- 03:15PM: Judging
- 05:00PM: Winners are announced / Prizathon!
- 05:30PM: You’ve survived… let’s celebrate!
Find out more about Opportunity Hack 2014, 2015, 2016, and some of the success stories here.
Partners
To be determined - please contact us if you are interested
Keynote
Derek Neighbors, CTO at Tanga
Derek Neighbors is a serial entrepreneur who helps people bring ideas to reality. Derek co-founded Gangplank, a collaborative workspace, in 2008 to help encourage local creatives to explore innovative ideas and create what they are passionate about. He now serves as CTO at Tanga.
Judge Biographies
Wes Hummel, Head of Site Operations and Site Reliability Engineering, PayPal
https://www.linkedin.com/in/weshummel
Wes leads a team of globally distributed software developers, quality engineers, communication specialists, and operations engineers. Wes joined PayPal from Clarity Communications Inc, a telecommunications start-up, where he was a software engineer, architect, tester, project manager, release engineer, and any other role the small startup needed. Prior to working at Clarity, Wes worked at Motorola developing software in their Cellular Infrastructure Group.
Wes has a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering and a Masters degree in Business Administration. He is passionate about mentoring, career development, and using technology to deliver business and customer value.
Stuart Hostler, Code Craftsman and Software Engineer, Amazon
https://www.linkedin.com/in/shostler
Stuart is a software engineer, architect, and agile coach whose passion centers around not only building amazing solutions but building amazing teams. He's a relentless voice in the conversation about how to organize people around work to create consistent steady value, while enabling people to live a good life at the same time. Burnout and lack of diversity are not a necessary side effect of tech.
Stuart has been in the software industry for over a decade, with experience from defense to education, and from startup to corporations. He is currently employed by Amazon and working to automatically identify, prevent and enforce customer impacting seller activity on Amazon's marketplace.
Chris Huie, Developer Evangelist at Galvanize Inc
https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-huie-896936b2
Chris Huie is the Developer Evangelist and Phoenix tech community ambassador at Galvanize in Phoenix. He is hugely active in the tech community organizing and supporting several dev focused meetups along with helping organize some of Phoenix's large tech-focused events like SQL Saturday, DevOps Day, and Startup Weekend. His background is in financial modeling and data science along with experience in front and back-end development with the cool and hip new technologies like Vue and React/Redux. When Chris isn't geeking out on Street Fighter V, Hearthstone, or watching Twitch he is walking his 70lb English Bulldog Rio.
Isac Artzi, PhD, Program Lead for Computer Science at Grand Canyon University.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/isacartzi
Dr. Artzi teaches upper level Computer Science courses in Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Analytics, Mathematical Modeling, and MBA courses. He mentors senior capstone projects and conducts research on adaptive algorithms and machine learning. Dr. Artzi's career spans 30 years in industry, research, military training, and international travel. Dr. Artzi's achievements include his Lynda.com C Programming class with over 1,100,000 student views in 142 countries, two software patents with Silicon Valley startup AppStream (acquired by Symantec), satellite-based distance learning systems in Israel (Gilat Satellite, Ltd), and published research in educational technology at Michigan State University. He holds a dual BS in Mathematics and Computer Science from Ben Gurion University in Israel, an MS in Computer Science from Michigan State University, a PhD in Instructional Design and Educational Technology from combined Michigan State University and Capella University programs, and a Data Science Specialization Certificate from Johns Hopkins University.
Alicia Isaacson, technical IT recruiter for MDI Group, Phoenix AZ
https://www.linkedin.com/in/alicia-isaacson
With close to 20 years of experience in IT Operations and Data analytics, Alicia currently spends her time connecting Arizona’s top talent to clients across the valley. When she’s not helping people land their dream jobs, she’s swimming, cooking and chilling with the fam.
Roxy Lee, Client Manager for MDI Group, Phoenix AZ
https://www.linkedin.com/in/roxylee
Roxy works with many of the great companies across the valley to assist in finding top talent to assist with their IT needs. She spends her time helping clients determine their product development strategies, sponsoring meetups, and connecting with the local IT community. She’s passionate about all things tech!
Eligibility
See official rules.
Requirements
- All members of team have registered on DevPost and are added to the project submission.
- Links to GitHub, and video or presentation must be included in project submission.
- At least two members of team will be present in person for demo to judges.
Prizes
$7,199 in prizes
1st Place
A Cash prize to the 1st place team in the amount of $3000; to be split evenly among all team members. Must have a PayPal account to receive transfer of funds. 1/2 will be paid within 5 business days of the Hackathon. The remaining half will be paid upon the winning team installing the solution accessible to the non-profit and the local non-profit going live with the solution [ within 30 days of the completion of the Hackathon ]
* For students in winning team, we guarantee an interview with College Recruiting teams at PayPal on or after 1/1/2018. Interviews would be for internship or full time positions based on student's graduation date.
2nd Place
A Cash prize to the 2nd place team in the amount of $2000; to be split evenly among all team members. Must have a PayPal account to receive transfer of funds. 1/2 will be paid within 5 business days of the Hackathon. The remaining half will be paid upon the winning team installing the solution accessible to the non-profit and the local non-profit going live with the solution. [ within 30 days of the completion of the Hackathon ]
* For students in winning team, we guarantee an interview with College Recruiting teams at PayPal on or after 1/1/2018. Interviews would be for internship or full time positions based on student's graduation date.
3rd Place
A Cash prize to the 3rd place team in the amount of $1000; to be split evenly among all team members. Must have a PayPal account to receive transfer of funds. 1/2 will be paid within 5 business days of the Hackathon. The remaining half will be paid upon the winning team installing the solution accessible to the non-profit and the local non-profit going live with the solution. [ within 30 days of the completion of the Hackathon ] * For students in winning team, we guarantee an interview with College Recruiting teams at PayPal on or after 1/1/2018. Interviews would be for internship or full time positions based on student's graduation date.
MDI Group Horizon Award
A Cash prize to the team that designs the most scalable solution for their charity organization. Each member on the team will receive a $100 cash prize. 1/2 will be paid within 5 business days of the Hackathon. The remaining half will be paid upon the winning team installing the solution accessible to the non-profit and the local non-profit going live with the solution. [ within 30 days of the completion of the Hackathon ]. We are seeking a winning team that designs practical applications, allowing their Non-Profit org to reach as many users as possible as they grow and expand their horizons.
Most Galvanizing Award
The “Most Galvanizing” prize for the team that is most surprising with their solution completeness. This team has put in the effort to solve major pain points for their non-profit and don't just have a prototype, but a working solution.
Each team member will receive:
1. Tickets to Startup Weekend ($100 value for each)
2. Tickets to DevOps Days ($100 value for each)
3. Galvanize part-time courses in JS/Python ($899 value for each)
See https://www.galvanize.com/phoenix for more details
Devpost Achievements
Submitting to this hackathon could earn you:
How to enter
- Join Opportunity Hack Arizona on DevPost
- Come to the event with a team or we will help you build a team of like minded folks.
Judges

Chris Huie
Developer Evangelist at Galvanize Inc

Wes Hummel
Head of Site Operations and Site Reliability Engineering, PayPal

Stuart Hostler
Code Craftsman and Software Engineer, Amazon

Isac Artzi
PhD, Program Lead for Computer Science at Grand Canyon University

Alicia Isaacson
Technical IT recruiter for MDI Group, Phoenix AZ

Roxy Lee
Client Manager for MDI Group, Phoenix AZ
Judging Criteria
-
Scope
How big an impact will your solution have on the community? Key things that are important are: (1) Scale of the problem being solved, (2) Potential reach, (3) Productivity gains -
User Experience
In order for your solution to be used by customers, it needs to have a good user experience and you need to be able to demonstrate and market your solution so that it can succeed long term -
Innovation
Displaying innovative solutions to the problems. Do you solve the problem in a novel way? Can you create a solution that is cohesive across different areas or technologies? -
Implementation
The projects need to be able to move from "proof-of-concept" to working project. At the beginning of the hackathon, teams will be documenting their problem statement on devpost when creating their projects and assessed against it at the end.
Questions? Email the hackathon manager
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