14 Nov Veterans Codeathon Recap
This past weekend, November 8-10, Geekdom and Codeup hosted the first-ever Veterans Codeathon, powered by CivTechSA. Coders, designers, and tech experts were encouraged to come and build something extraordinary to improve the quality of life for our active-duty military members, veterans, and their spouses.
After Friday’s kick-off event, five teams were formed and began working on four of the five challenges presented. Teams spent the weekend on the 8th floor of Geekdom, working hard, eating lots of delicious food, and meeting with mentors to perfect their code/presentation. On Sunday the teams presented to five incredible judges: Rachel Bell, Major General Holcomb, Tim Woliver (COSA), Gary Timpson (TX Serves), and Faisal Jawaid (SWBC).
All five presentations were extremely impactful but after the judges deliberated the teams below were awarded.
1st place ($3,000):
Care Package: Care Package brings resources to those who need them in a scalable and beneficial way. With the support of the community, we hope to see Care Package make an impact on combining forces with current VSO’s and those who wish to make a difference.
2nd place ($2,000):
VB Book: San Antonio has a wide variety of local veteran-owned companies and businesses, and Veterans Business Book created a one-stop-shop that raises awareness of these companies and increases involvement from the greater San Antonio area.
3rd place ($1,000):
MilHub: MilHub was created to bridge the gap of information for people from the military community moving to San Antonio looking to use their VA benefits or military background. MilHub will be a one-stop-shop of information regarding education, housing, military-friendly hiring companies and more in the San Antonio Area. MilHub also won crowd-favorite ($500).
Not only did these teams create impactful solutions but through sign up donations the event was able to donate $350 to TXServes. We wanted to thank all of our participants and all of those that are part of the military community that were involved. We hope you had as much fun as we did and can’t wait to host another military community-focused codeathon with our amazing partners Geekdom and Codeup again!