I’m proud that Cisco supported and powered the largest student-run hackathon in the country last weekend – helping support the next generation of engineering talent.
Organised by the Imperial College Department of Computing Society, hundreds of students from across the UK descended on Imperial College in London for the 24-hour IC Hack event.
We’ve got a long-standing relationship with Imperial College. It’s ranked as one of the best universities in the world, and also has a reputation for helping develop engineers. You can see straight away why we wanted to get involved.
For these students we wanted to show the art of the possible using Cisco development tools. As well as leading two workshops, we showcased some of our work around containerisation, APIs, and collaboration in the form of our Webex Teams Board where we ran a “Leave your mark” challenge for the best drawing on a digital whiteboard.
Congratulations to @AurelDev and @AlexisMarinoiu for the winning entry:
We also shared with the students details on Cisco DevNet and everything that could allow them to do across Cisco’s portfolio. This worked as a fantastic introduction of how they could leverage a platform which is used by over 500,000 developers around the world.
At Cisco we’re great at making everything happen in the background. But through APIs we can start to surface what we’re doing, and also what’s possible.
Students clearly feeling inspired; among their solutions included a web application for fridges, a robot which scanned supermarket items, and an augmented reality application which automatically translated food menus. There was also a visit from a BBC London news crew to see what was happening.
I thought this montage video captured the atmosphere from the day brilliantly, and you can get a look at what the students came up with. Plus, you get a glimpse of what can only be described as the biggest order of pizza I’ve ever seen…
Supporting the next generation is so important to us at Cisco
Enabling the future workforce with the skills it needs to succeed is at the heart of what we’re doing.
Cisco is at the centre of the technological transformation happening around the world right now. With this we’re also driving automation and programmability across our solutions. But with the accelerating pace of change, future workforces also need to be able to understand the direction the world of technology is going.
There’s a greater demand than ever before for the skills to connect infrastructure and applications together. This is so future engineers will be able to help solve problems that come with scale, automation, and developing new applications for businesses. That’s why I thought this was such a great event and we were thrilled to be able to back this with our sponsorship, our people and our technology.
For the students attending, I hope this was also a great chance to meet Cisco’s team of engineers and developers. Meeting people who manage the creation and delivery of global platforms is great experience and can help people realise the potential in themselves and the direction they may want to take in their own careers.
A massive congratulations to everyone who took part, and to the teams which won prizes for their solutions!
If you’re interested in joining Cisco check our our careers page.
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