Connect.. Build and Empower organizations to change lives across the world

Our fourth annual Opportunity Hack will open at 8:00 a.m. on October 1st. At Opportunity Hack, you can network, share ideas and build solutions that enable impact and social innovation!
Join a team that will hack solutions for any of the problem statements listed by our partnering non-profits!

Check in will be from 8:00 until 9:00. Please note that ONLY THE FIRST 200 will be allowed to enter the door.

At 9:00 we'll have our opening keynote speaker.

Then the fun begins! Our non-profits will all have an opportunity to pitch their ideas to all the participants. We'll be moving this along quickly so that we can move into team building. You can bring a whole team, but if you don't, we're pretty good at facilitating team formation. This is the part of the program that people tend to be the most nervous about, but it all works out. We've done it successfully a number of times and we'll make sure you get hooked up.

Please note that the pitch session scheduled to take place at 9:30 am is for only non-profits pitching ideas.

11:00 a.m. It's time to get your Hack On! You have from now until 3:00 p.m. on Sunday! We're providing meals and snacks and support around the clock.

3:00 p.m. on Sunday it's time to let the keyboard rest. You'll want to have your prototype and presentation ready for a three minute presentation to the judges with some Q&A. There will be a brief intermission for scoring and then the top teams will be chosen and accolades will flow! This will mark the end of the event and the beginning of the celebration, where we will also provide appropriate supplies.

Detailed Agenda

Saturday (10/01)

• 08:00AM: Doors open for check-in
• 09:00AM: Opening ceremony
• 09:30AM: Project pitches
• 10:30AM: Team formation
• 11:00AM: The Hackathon begins!
• Noon: Lunch is served
• 02:00PM: Submit team details
• 06:00PM: Dinner is served
• HACK THROUGH THE NIGHT

Sunday (10/02)

• Midnight: Pizza served
• 08:00AM:Breakfast is served & Subject matter experts available (3 hours)
• Noon: Lunch is served / I can’t think straight but this tastes awesome!
• 02:00PM: Code checked into GitHub
• 02:45PM: Presentations submitted on DevPost
• 03:00PM: Hackathon ends
• 03:00PM: Tour(s) of TechShop facilities available
• 03:15PM: Judging
• 04:30PM: Tour(s) of TechShop facilities end
• 04:30PM: Closing Keynote
• 05:00PM: Winners are announced / Prizathon!
• 05:30PM: Drinkathon / You’ve survived… let’s celebrate!

Find out more about Opportunity Hack 2014, 2015, and some of the success stories here.

Partners

Avnet, Inc.      TechShop, Inc.

Keynote:     Jaime Casap, Education Evangelist, Google Inc.

Jaime Casap is the Education Evangelist at Google. Jaime evangelizes the power and potential of technology and the web as enabling and supporting tools in pursuit of promoting inquiry-driven project-based learning models. Working with the Google for Education Team, Jaime collaborates with school systems, educational organizations, and leaders focused on building innovation and iteration into our education policies and practices. He speaks on education, technology, innovation, and generation z, at events around the world.

In addition to his role at Google, Jaime serves on a number of boards, including Inquiry Schools Dot Org, Seed Spot NEXT, and Mi Familia Vota.  He is part of the Phoenix Union School District Team, who created the Phoenix Coding Academy, an inquiry-based high school designed with computer science as the core language students use in pursuit of the problems they want to solve.  Jaime is also an adjunct professor at Arizona State University, where he teaches classes on policy, innovation, and leadership.

You can read Jaime’s blog at www.jcasap.com and can follow and reach him on Twitter at @jcasap

Closing Keynote:  Trinity Donovan, CEO of Chandler Christian Community Center 

Trinity Donovan serves as the CEO of Chandler Christian Community Center. CCCC changes lives by nourishing minds and bodies to create a connected, thriving community through services including food boxes, senior meals, rent and utility assistance, and family and early childhood programming. Working in nonprofit leadership positions for the past 17 years, her areas of focus have included hunger and homelessness, early childhood, senior programs, financial stability, domestic violence, and youth development. Trinity also served two terms as a Council Member for the City of Chandler and has represented the city on a regional and national level in areas of human services, transportation, water, and sustainability.

A graduate of Chandler High School, Trinity holds a bachelor's degree in Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, and a master's degree in Sociology – both from Stanford University. She and her husband, Ray Bolkan, enjoy spending time with their daughters, Micah Rae and Naomi, who are both under 2 years old.

Judge Biographies

Deepak Arora, Vice President Web Engineering, American Express

Deepak leads a global engineering team to deepen global customer engagement & realize digital first strategy. He has held varied roles in his 10 years at American Express including platform engineering, site reliability, marketing systems and partnership product development. Prior to American Express, he was at IBM provided software development services.

Deepak holds a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering and a Masters degree in Business. He’s passionate about modular engineering development practices and bringing it to life at scale!

Wes Hummel, Head of Site Operations and Site Reliability Engineering, PayPal

Wes leads a team of globally distributed software developers, quality engineers, communication specialists, and operations engineers. Wes joined PayPal from Clarity Communications Inc, a telecommunications start-up, where he was a software engineer, architect, tester, project manager, release engineer, and any other role the small startup needed.  Prior to working at Clarity, Wes worked at Motorola developing software in their Cellular Infrastructure Group.

Wes has a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering and a Masters degree in Business Administration. He is passionate about mentoring, career development, and using technology to deliver business and customer value.  

Shane Nixon, Solutions Consultant, Avnet

Shane Nixon is a technical consultant at Avnet, a leading technology distributor and Fortune 500 company with global headquarters in Phoenix, AZ.  In this role, Shane is part of Avnet’s network and security team and is in charge of technical support for best in class network security companies F5, Aruba, RSA, Checkpoint and Brocade. 

He is an Arizona native who has worked in networking and security most of his life, including serving as an Electronic Warfare Technician in the United States Navy. During college he received first place in the Avnet Tech Games and was subsequently hired by Avnet where he has worked for the past six years.

Jon Barbara, Pacific Coast Regional Director & General Manager, TechShop 

Jon Barbara is an educator and artist by trade. With a degree is History/Social Science, Education and Fine Art and a love for technology - Jon has gone on to pursue a multitude of professions and gained many skills. For the last 15 years, Jon has been in executive management roles, doing public speaking on leadership and working to spread the word of the Maker Movement through his work at TechShop. Jon's true passion is seeing people succeed!

Randy Moussavi, General Manager, Vice President, Open Skyp Corp.

Randy Moussavi brings over 24 years of IT leadership in architecture, services delivery and solution development to Fortune 500 customers throughout the Southwest. For the last twenty years, he held a variety of executive and leadership positions at OpenSky Corporation and International Network Services (INS), where he started new offices in Texas, Arizona and Southern California markets.  Prior to that, he worked at Wells Fargo Bank, Honeywell, and Martin Marietta in architecture and engineering capacities.

Randy has a MBA from ASU and MS in engineering from California State University, Long Beach.  He is also an emeritus CCIE.  Randy enjoys mentorship, coaching and a fan of economics. 

Samantha Turner, Executive Director, Ballet Arizona

Samantha Turner is a leader in both the non-profit and corporate sectors, with expertise in marketing and business management. Before Samantha was appointed executive director, she served three years as Ballet Arizona’s director of marketing, achieving record sales revenues twice during that tenure. Prior to joining Ballet Arizona, Samantha held leadership roles in both non-profit and Fortune 500 companies. Most recently she served as head of business operations and finance for CAP21, a New York-based non-profit performing arts organization. Samantha’s for-profit career includes high-level marketing and business management roles at Aflac, Assurant and other organizations of national and regional scope. In addition to her professional experience, Samantha holds MBAs in marketing and international business/ecommerce, and an undergraduate degree in broadcast journalism.

$6,843 in prizes

1. Join Opportunity Hack Arizona on DevPost
2. Come to the event with a team or we will help you build a team of like minded folks. 

• Scope
  How big an impact will your solution have on the community? Key things that are important are * Scale of the problem being solved * Potential reach * Productivity gains
• User Experience
  In order for your solution to be used by customers, it needs to have a good user experience and you need to be able to demonstrate and market your solution so that it can succeed long term
• Innovation
  Displaying innovative solutions to the problems. Do you solve the problem in a novel way? Can you create a solution that is cohesive across different areas or technologies?
• Implementation
  The projects need to be able to move from "proof-of-concept" to working project. At the beginning of the hackathon, teams will be documenting their problem statement on devpost when creating their projects and assessed against it at the end.
• Avnet 'Security of Things': authentication
  Is there a secure log-in process, multi-factor authentication, password timeouts, session timeouts, password requirements? = 10 pts.
• Avnet 'Security of Things': authorization
  Who is allowed to see data? What are they allowed to see? Are there different levels of access based on the requester? = 10 pts.
• Avnet 'Security of Things': SQL Injection vulnerabilities
  Do fields have strict requirements for what can be entered? = 20 pts.
• Avnet 'Security of Things': Encryption
  Is the sensitive data is encrypted? Detail the type of encryption used. = 10 pts.
• Avnet 'Security of Things': Overall Security
  Is the data protected against outside threats? What other programs provide access or receive data from this solution? Where applicable, does the security solution meet compliance requirements such as HIPPA or PCI? = 30 pts.