The winner of the Indiana vs. Texas Challenge, (initially set to be announced Thursday, March 12) is now scheduled to be announced Wednesday, March 25 — and a pair of Hoosier teams have their eye on the $4,000 grand prize.
Organized by the Indy Chamber and TechPoint in partnership with the State of Indiana, the three-week “hackathon” involves students, faculty, industry professionals, entrepreneurs or talented citizens in the Hoosier and Lone Star states racing to develop applications for public agencies that can benefit the public-at-large.
In Indiana, the challenges — and winners of a $4,000 state-level prize — included:
1). An easy-to-use platform for the Indiana Department of Homeland Security that guides Hoosiers affected by natural disasters and emergencies to the proper state agencies or non-profit organizations. This challenge was won by Red Alert Indiana, whose members include the father-son team of John and Isaiah Schevola. Their application guides users through a checklist of potential services that can be administered at “one-stop-shop” locations and stores contact information for service providers in a database for quick reference.
2). A more efficient way for the Indiana Department of Environmental Management to process nearly two dozen varieties of documents in a streamlined, centralized and paperless manner. This challenge was won by an alliance of two teams — Agency360 and RebornCode — whose members include Matt Molter, Darye Henry, Ollie Ward and Tonya Hanshaw. Their application allows document administrators to create preset tasks that are assigned to move permit applications through the approval process and can create document templates based on the permit type.
Molter holds a bachelors (criminal justice and information technology) and masters degrees (human computer interactions) from Indiana University-Bloomington. A former police officer for Indiana University (4 years) and the city of Carmel (6 years), he founded Agency360 — a Fishers-based public safety software company — in November 2014. The company was formerly known as DesignPD, which Molter launched in 2006.
Texas teams were asked to develop:
1). A mobile app for www.my35.org, which is the Texas Department of Transportation’s planning application that provides information on road conditions, current and future lane closures and traffic delays along Interstate 35. This challenge was won by the My ChildCare App, whose details are available here.
2). An application for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services that provides a map-based view and service offerings of local child-care operations. This challenge was won by the TxDoT My35 Mobile App, whose details are available here.
More information about the Indiana winners is available here. Both Indiana University and Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis are among sponsors for the event. Other sponsors include: AT&T Indiana, Indiana Interactive, Interactive Intelligence, KSM Consulting, SAP, iLab, Kronos, Netlogx, Perscio, Ball State University, the University of Notre Dame, Purdue University and the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. In-kind sponsors include Launch Fishers, The Speak Easy, The Bureau and the Eleven Fifty Coding Academy.
Others who played a role in organizing the hackathon included Jim Shea and Steve Mannheimer. Shea is senior director of planning and communications for the School of Informatics and Computing at IU-Bloomington. Mannheimer is associate dean for faculty affairs and professor of media arts and science with the School of Informatics and Computing at IUPUI.
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