CybersecurityHackathons used by government, industry for app development, recruitment
Local and state governments, the music industry and private businesses have begun to host “hackathons” in an effort to learn more about applications that steal and use their data, recruit candidates for cybersecurity jobs, and more generally celebrate the hacking subculture.
Comptitors concentrating during a hackathon // Source: ifeng.com
Local and state governments, the music industry and private businesses have begun to host “hackathons” in an effort to learn more about applications that steal and use their data, recruit candidates for cybersecurity jobs, and more generally celebrate the hacking subculture.
The Denver Post notes that the term “hack” carries with it a negative image, but in the tech industry the term is often used for people who use their technical skill to do good.
“For most, ‘hack’ or ‘hacker’ connotes images of some scary guys in a dark room trying to steal your passwords and personal data,” entrepreneur Jim Deters, founder of the Galvanize tech campus in Denver told thePost.
“For those that run in the geek or tech subculture, ‘hacker’ has been around for awhile. In most recent years, the idea of a ‘life hack.’ a productivity shortcut for those clever enough to be in the know, has become very popular with Generation X and Y.”
Last month ninety cities across the country held hacker-related events, including Denver which held Hack4Colorado, where about 100 coders developed applications for health and wellness, education, and other subjects to help residents of the state.
The hackathon boom started around eight years ago with the development of an Internet accessible application programming interface, also known as APIs.
An API is a library which includes specifications for routines, data structures, object classes, and variables. In simpler terms, an API is a set of instructions which allow one software program to interact with another.
“Rewind eight years ago and hackathons didn’t really exist,” Elliot Turner, CEO of Denver-based AlchemyAPI, told thePost. “The growth of these hackathon and hack days events is really directly tied to a specific phenomenon, and that is the available of open, Internet-accessible APIs.”
Hackathons are usually free for the companies that attend and who open their API to programmers in order to develop applications. Once the event concludes, the hackers give demonstrations of their programs.
“These are really ways for people that are writing code to, just like connecting to a website, connect to code that’s out there on the Internet to get it to do something interesting, whether that’s sending an e-mail, analyzing text or displaying a map,” Turner said. “Lots of companies are starting to open up their infrastructure and make it available to developers.”
Denver will also host the Music Hack Day Denver in conjunction with the Underground Music Showcase this weekend, bringing together local bands and music in an effort to shine the international spotlight on the Denver/Boulder technology community.
Beatport, an online music store and a community for DJs, is sponsoring the event.
“For Beatport, the Music Hack Day is more than a recruiting event, although it is a great opportunity to meet developers interested in our space,” Brian Voelschow, the company’s director of engineering told the Post. “We want to grow a community of developers in Denver and the world that are familiar with our API and want to work with us.”
