The Center for Business & Information Technologies at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette seeks innovative thinkers and programmers of all types for the CajunCodeFest Smart Community Challenge March 29 – April 1. The goal is to transform data into real world solutions. Participants organize themselves into teams to build civic engagement apps and tools for cash and prizes. Each year the competition focuses on the new theme, 2017’s theme is Smart Gigabit Communities. Teams will have 24+ hours to develop a smart communities application.
Coders will have access to a special CajunCodeFest data portal with data sets provided by Lafayette Consolidated Government, the Lafayette Parish Assessor, and other open data sources. Data categories include: census, environment, city-parish administration, community safety, emergency response, boundaries, assessor, and transportation.
Current major sponsors of the event include CGI, Stone Energy, and LusFiber. Currently, CajunCodeFest 5.0 has over $10,000 in cash and prizes in the categories of grand prize winner, best student team, and team favorite.
“CajunCodeFest taps Acadiana’s entrepreneurial spirit and allows Lafayette to be the test bed in the use of networked technologies and gigabit innovations as a Smart Community,” said Matthew Delcambre, Director of CBIT
Registration is free, but space is limited. Register as an individual (to be paired with a team), or create your own team. All participants and guests must register. www.cajuncodefest.org. Email Andrea at info@cajuncodefest.org or call 337-482-0627 with questions.
