WIMTACH Hackathons Provide Valuable Industry Experience for Centennial College Students and Innovative Ideas for Industry Partners.

Hackathons are one of the key ways WIMTACH provides students with experiential learning opportunities. These hackathons are also a way to offer innovative technological solutions for clients and industry partners. Many of the students who have participated in WIMTACH hackathons are now members of the WIMTACH team. This happened recently with a virtual hackathon with PetnerUp.

PetnerUp is a recent startup company that needed help creating a social media platform for owners of all pets. The application aimed to inform users how to take care of their pets best and increase engagement among pet owners by sharing tips and tricks. Above all else, the application aimed to take all the fun of social media and put it directly in the hands of pet owners.

The hackathon with PetnerUP allowed students to reign over how the application will function and its overall aesthetic. During the event, four student groups worked on developing the mobile application from the ground up. They used Figma, a vector graphics editor and prototyping tool, to bring their ideas to life. This allowed students to implement skills they had learned at Centennial College and apply them to a real-world setting.

The client was impressed by the innovative student ideas and the eye-catching designs. After presenting their ideas to the PetnerUp team, they selected the winning group of the hackathon.

One of the project managers overseeing the project was recent WIMTACH hire, Toshiv Shrivastava. Toshiv recently completed Centennial College’s project management program and is in the process of completing his experiential learning opportunity at WIMTACH. For him, getting the chance to oversee a hackathon was exhilarating and fulfilling. He also enjoyed getting the opportunity to work directly with students and seeing their passion come alive.

“This was actually the first project that I worked on before I started working on other projects,” he said when asked about his experience working the hackathon. “[It] was quite exciting because I could see so much enthusiasm among all the students. The team of students that I had was really fueled up and had really great ideas,” he added.

The winning group members from the PetnerUP hackathon are currently employed at WIMTACH and working on the mobile application to gain additional experiential learning.

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