From the 18th to the 20th of March, Taiwan held the first ever OpenStack Application Hackathon, and it was a huge success! With over 200 attendees, hackers worked day and night for 41 hours to deliver their application built on top of OpenStack.
Aptira’s Joanna Huang (Hackathon mentor lead and Taiwan OpenStack User Group lead) said: “It was exciting to see enormous interest in learning OpenStack and engaging into OpenStack application development from our local community. The survey result shows more than 95% of hackathon participants will continue to learn about OpenStack, and nearly 90% have developed a better understanding of how to build applications on top of OpenStack. OpenStack cloud application era is clearly here and it’s the bright and right future the community is heading to.”
Above: Teams working on their OpenStack Applications at the Hackathon.
Teams produced a range of quality apps, including:
- A “daigou” shopping service platform integrating big data and OpenStack cloud computing technologies.
- A social network application using semantic analysis, big data analysis, and OpenStack technologies to assist real-time disaster rescue and emergency medical service.
- A gaming platform with ability of auto scaling on-demand using pure OpenStack technologies.
The grand prize was awarded to L.I.K.A. who built a project called “Phantom of L.I.K.A” which is a musical instrument learning system on OpenStack in conjunction with the community sharing mechanism. The system collects large datasets recorded by muscle movement sensors applied on professional musicians. Those sensors can detect subtle arm muscles movement and resolve muscle pull and its corresponding finger movements to precisely record the rhythm, strength, and sound in data form for learners to accurately follow.
Above: Attendees on stage with the prize – A fun trip to the Austin OpenStack summit.
Feedback from participants proved the success of the event, with over 89% of participants identifying that they have developed a better understanding of how to build applications on top of OpenStack, and over 95% interested learning more about OpenStack.
“OpenStack can do infinitely more than all we can ask or imagine.”
“OpenStack has its absolute advantage on application development. It allows us to understand and use all kind of cloud resources in a very short period of time which we have never seen on other cloud platforms before.”
“Before attending this hackathon, we all learnt about OpenStack at home individually. This event brought us together to brainstorm application ideas using our OpenStack knowledge, to meet people from different areas, and to learn from mentors and other hackathon teams.”
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Above: Tom Fifield, community manager of the OpenStack Foundation, and Michael Jenkins, a consultant for the Taiwan OpenStack User Group who proposed and advocated the OpenStack Application Hackathon event. Also, Foundation Executive Director Jonathan Bryce and Vice President Lauren Sell appeared in the venue to surprise and encourage Hackathon participants on Sunday afternoon.
Jonathan Bryce (Executive Director of the OpenStack Foundation) said: “We have thousands of developers around the world who helped to build OpenStack. But ultimately the real power of OpenStack is not the cloud but what you build on top of cloud. So this is our first application hackathon for OpenStack anywhere in the world. I’m really excited that we are able to put this together here in Taiwan with the support from academia, government, industry, and all of you who came and devoted so much time building awesome application on top of OpenStack. “
The Premier of Taiwan, Simon Chang, was also in attendance, stating “OpenStack cloud computing technologies are already a global trend. The industrial in Taiwan today is in urgent need of restructuring to strengthen its competitive position. If we can not keep up with the pace of global cloud technology development, the competitiveness will be inevitably limited. Therefore, we should focus on and actively promote OpenStack technologies from cloud professionals training to application product development. Premier Chang also further indicated the Industrial Development Bureau, Ministry of Economic Affairs, and Ministry of Education to invite the delegation to participate the upcoming OpenStack Summit, held in April in Austin.
Above: Premier of Taiwan Simon Chang, and OpenStack Community Wrangler David Flanders.
For more information or to stay up to date with all OpenStack Application Hackathon events around the world, please visit http://www.openstackapphack.org/.
