Register today for Hacks with Friends 2017—a fun-filled event where you have two days to break out of your confines, form a team, build a project (or hack) from scratch, and show it off in a competition! This “hackathon” is all about collaboration, making new connections, and exploring new technologies and ways of doing business or improve an existing service. The only limit is your imagination.
Hacks with Friends 2017 will take place March 2-3 at the Ross School of Business and is open to all U-M IT professionals. Developers, analysts, UX, service center specialists, designers, security specialists, trainers, desktop support, project manager, or whoever else you are… We want you to be a part of it!
“I liked being able to switch gears and work on something very different from what I do on a daily basis,” Drew Montag (HITS), a member of the 2016 winning hack team, explained. “My main job responsibilities involve answering tickets from Med School researchers on using the campus supercomputer, Flux. The Hacks With Friends project involved product design and development. It was a nice break from my daily routine.”
Hacks with Friends is an evolution of an idea that began in 2013 with “MSIS Hack Day.” The energy created from having a hack event for campus IT professionals grew. In the spring of 2015 an expanded Hacks with Friends event was tested with participants from ITS, MCIT, MSIS, and the School of Dentistry. The success of that event paved the way for the Office of the CIO to sponsor Hacks with Friends with an open invitation to the entire Michigan IT community in 2016 and again this year.
There are seven hack themes for this year, the first six of which come from President Schlissel’s areas of focus:
2016 Hacks with Friends winners (l to r) Raden Tonev, MICHR; Drew Montag, HITS; John Gallias, LSA IT; Mark Champe, LSA IT (Ken Caldwell)
- Academic Innovation
- Biosciences
- Campus Climate
- Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
- Environment and Sustainability
- Poverty Solutions
- Improving IT Service Delivery
Pitches for hacks can be submitted online the week of February 13. Visit the Hacks with Friends page for specific information. If you would like contribute to making the event a success, please consider volunteering.
