This past Friday, February 20th, the J.B. Hunt Transport Company hosted their Spring 2016 yearly hackathon programming competition. The competition took place in the J.B. Hunt Building at the University of Arkansas. In an event scheduled to last 20 hours, 9 to 12 teams composed of University of Arkansas students got together at 7:00 PM in the Axciom Lab. Teams were composed of 1 to 4 students. In this competition, teams were challenged to build an application in the platform of their choice -- Android, Linux, Windows or iOS. The winners for this year’s competition would receiving prices such as Go-Pros, Amazon Fire TV sticks with Voice Remote, 1 Terabyte Hard Drives, and Dual USB Port Phone Chargers. Project presentations were scheduled to begin at 3:00 PM of the day after -- Saturday, February 21st.

After 20 hours of designing, coding, 5 minute naps, caffeine and snacks teams presented their projects. The judges were composed of J.B. Executives and Managers. Interesting projects such as Artificial Intelligence based games, cyber security systems, and service providing applications were presented. After the judges deliberated, the team A New Era was awarded 1st place! This team was composed of Computer Science students Meena Mana and Alex Chitwood, and by Computer Engineering students Moises Guerra (myself) and Andrew Felder. Andrew, Alex and Moises had already worked together in past competitions so one might say team chemistry played a role in the team’s win.

The 4-person team developed an Android app called Wear Me. The app gave users the power to design their own clothes. After choosing a type of shirt through the app -- tank top, t-shirt or Cuban-style shirt -- users can add their own special touch to their shirt. Features like choosing your own color, adding personal phrases, and taking pictures and adding them to the different types of shirts were displayed during the team’s presentation. The team was hoping to develop add an e-commerce component to the app in which users could also choose to order the shirts they designed. Unfortunately for everyone hoping to use Wear Me, time ran out on them, and this last part was not implemented. The team did not confirm whether or not they will continue working on the application after the competition. For now, we can just hope, me or you will one day be ordering a cuban style shirt with a very crazy tiger on the front of it thanks to Wear Me.

A few weeks later, Andrew and Alex accepted to join the J.B. Hunt software developer team this coming summer. I am sure both of them will continue to do great things. Meena Mana on the other hand, will be joining Walmart this summer. Can’t wait to hear back from her next semester. Moises -- a Panamanian and senior Computer Engineering student -- will be graduating this coming May 14th. Moises’s passion for technology and engineering has lead him to join the IBM team down at Austin, Texas this coming June. He  will be working full-time for IBM where we know a lot more innovation is in store for him. This coming summer will surely represent a new era -- wink wink -- for these four students. Well, that was it for this year’s J.B. Hunt hackathon. Can’t wait for next year’s!