2021 Hacks with Friends — a completely different experience

The pandemic kept many events from happening over the past year, but the 2021 Hacks with Friends (HWF) was not one of them. The first-ever virtual Hacks with Friends kicked off on May 7 with the first of three Friday sessions thanks to the organization and resourcefulness of the planning committee, led by co-chairs Joe Lubomirski (Dearborn ITS) and Kenny Moore (ITS Ann Arbor), and lessons learned from the successful virtual Michigan IT Symposium. Eleven teams made up of 103 participants from across the Michigan IT community came together remotely to compete in a hackathon unlike any before.

Holding the 2021 HWF event was a testament to how the IT community has successfully navigated a difficult time. In his opening remarks, Ravi Pendse, vice president for IT and chief information officer, pointed out that the 2020 HWF event was the last in-person event many had attended prior to the pandemic, and how incredibly grateful he is for the resilience, hard work, and heartfelt empathy that the Michigan IT Community has shown this past year.

“You moved with rapid speed to help the U-M community,” stated Pendse. “Working together, we shifted and expanded IT services for the entire community, we led, and we took the changes in front of us head-on. From the bottom of my heart, I am grateful.”

The competition culminated mid-morning on May 21. Each team presented their hack in three-minute presentations that were voted on by a live streaming U-M audience. By noon the top four teams had been determined and advanced to the finals to present 10-minute presentations in an attempt to impress our judges.

“All the hacks were great this year,” exclaimed event co-chair Joe Lubomirski from UM-Dearborn ITS. “The diverse ideas and innovative solutions speak to the true collaborative nature of the Michigan IT community.”

In the end, it was a tight race. Points were tallied based on the official HWF judging rubric and the final results were announced.

First place — Gene-E: Genetic Testing Family Communication Prototype (Team 1)

Gene-E was created to help people with cancer communicate with their family about their risk of developing hereditary cancer. It supports patients in sharing this life-saving information with their family members. Gene-E gives patients a platform to add and keep track of family members they want to contact. It also provides a responsive email template to help the patient customize their message by communication style and the amount of information they want to share.

Name	Department	Role
Jeffrey Rosczyk	Center for Health Communications Research (CHCR), Rogel Cancer Center	Pitch leader / developer
Diane Egleston	CHCR, Rogel Cancer Center	Documentation specialist
Amanda Wright	HITS	Cheerleader & documentation specialist
Mike Nowak	CHCR, Rogel Cancer Center	Developer at large
Ian Moore	CHCR, Rogel Cancer Center	Designer & developer
Jill Solomon	CHCR, Rogel Cancer Center	Documentation specialist
Swetha Nettem	ITS Infrastructure & Sys Ops	Developer
Kevin Jeong	ITS Enterprise App Svcs	User experience designer
Penny Yang	CHCR, Rogel Cancer Center	Documentation specialist
Liz Bacon	CHCR, Rogel Cancer Center	Documentation specialist
Shelly Chang	CHCR, Rogel Cancer Center	Developer
Colleen Leh	CHCR, Rogel Cancer Center	Designer & developer

Second place & People’s Choice award — Scholarships Come to You (Team 9)

Scholarships Come To You will leave no scholarship funds unclaimed by proactively alerting students of scholarships using an automated process to match students with scholarships based on eligibility. Lists of eligible students will be identified via a data visualization tool (Denodo) and a Salesforce Campaign will be used to notify students.

Name	Department	Role
Tong Sun	CoE CAEN	Pitch leader
Karen Saito	CoE CAEN	Project manager
Reinhard Wilmer	LSA – Student	Business analyst
Alyssa Bigley	ITS Infrastructure Networking (Intern)	Application developer
Victor Ogundipe Jr.	CoE CAEN	Data architect
Bryan Hartman	ITS Information Quest	Denodo architect
Jeffrey Jenkins	ITS Information Quest	Denodo architect
Brian Awood	ITS Infrastructure	Salesforce developer
George Blichar	CoE Dean-Engagement	Salesforce developer
Tianyu Jiang	Rackham – Student	Development assistant
Ran Yan	Rackham – Student	Development assistant
Josh Charles	ITS Enterprise App Svcs	Business sys analyst

Third place — IT Mentor Matching On Demand (Team 10)

Mentoring is a valuable opportunity, and we need to do more of it. Since the initial pilot in 2017, nearly 200 Michigan IT staff members have participated in the Michigan IT Mentorship program. The current program involves a time-consuming manual matching process, which limits the reach to matching once per year. This hack created and identified a platform to help IT mentors and mentees find each other “on demand.” This could potentially broaden the participation and also provide near-real time matching and confirmation of mentors and mentees, as well as allow the mentorship program to be available year-round.

Name	Department	Role
Dan Stanish	Medical School – Pediatrics	Pitch leader, process, documentation
Will Burns	ITS Enterprise App Svcs	Design guidance & presentation
Aubrey Theisen Morse	HITS	Process & presentation
Stefanie Horvath	ITS Communications	Process, presentation, & documentation
Ajitha Devarajan	Development – Digital Infrastructure	Developer & documentation
Ed Thierbach	ITS Sec Svcs ID & Access Mgt	Developer & presentation
Ryan Vis	ITS Enterprise App Svcs	Business analyst
Abbey Roelofs	LSA TS	Developer & presentation
Chris Stockbridge	LSA TS	Developer
Rachael Wojciechowski	ITS Communications	Design guidance & presentation

Honorable mention — Establishing passwords for sponsored affiliates (Team 2)

Most newly-created UMICH identities establish their own passwords, but uniqnames created through the Sponsorship System must have their passwords conveyed to them by the Sponsor Administrator (or, sometimes, the ITS Service Center). This hack allows sponsored affiliates to be able to set passwords on their account directly, rather than relayed by the administrator who generated the account.

Name	Department	Role
Victoria Green	ITS Sec Svcs ID & Access Mgt	Pitch leader, organizer, requirements, & testing
Abdulrahman Ateya	ITS Sec Svcs ID & Access Mgt (Intern)	Requirements & presentation
Elizabeth Barrieault	ITS Support Services	Requirements & presentation
Frank Wang	ITS Sec Svcs ID & Access Mgt (Intern)	Developer
Kyle Cochrane	ITS Sec Svcs ID & Access Mgt	Developer
Sheila Sanders	ITS Support Services	Requirements & testing
Adria Shines	ITS Enterprise App Svcs (Intern)	Requirements & presentation
Cindy Wang	ITS Sec Svcs ID & Access Mgt (Intern)	Developer
Tamariah Davis	ITS Sec Svcs ID & Access Mgt (Intern)	Requirements & testing