Exeter students to compete in 48-hour 'hackathon'
Students from the University of Exeter and across the South will take part in a 48-hour ‘hackathon’ this Friday.
SETsquared, a collaboration between the Universities of Bath, Bristol, Exeter, Southampton and Surrey, will host the South of England heat of the Microsoft Imagine Cup on Friday 15th February.
The Microsoft Imagine Cup is a student technology competition in which students from across the globe create their own apps for mobile, Windows or Azure in a bid to win a $50k prize at the finals in Russia.
The student developers have just 48 hours to develop their app while on site at the University of Exeter Students’ Guild. The apps will be judged there and then and the winning three teams will go on to the UK final.
SETsquared is also bolting on added extras to the event in a bid to nurture the next generation of entrepreneurial app developers. These include:
- Presentations on building apps from companies such as Opposable Games, Intohand, AppLingua and Mubaloo;
- Workshops on how to build good teams;
- The chance to network with people in the business.
In an added twist, the former recipient of SETsquared’s Kauffman Scholarship, entrepreneur Alistair Shepherd, will use his company Saberr’s profiling technology he has created to attempt to predict the winners of the heat.
SETsquared’s partnership director, Graham Harrison, said: “We are very much looking forward to welcoming students from the University of Exeter and hope that among them we may have found the next big app company.
“They are already developing fantastic technical skill at university and we are delighted to give them extra support and advice in turning their ideas into profitable businesses.”
Helping people turn ideas into profitable business is a key part of SETsquared’s work. A not-for-profit partnership, it supports university research ‘spin outs’ as well as early-stage technology companies with high growth potential from the wider business community.
To find out more about the Microsoft Imagine Cup South event at the University of Exeter, which runs from Friday 15th to Sunday 17th February, click here.
