Amazon Games today announced a series of one-day hackathon competitions aimed at aspiring student developers across the country, with a focus on communities traditionally under-represented in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) fields. The hackathons will give students real-world practice with Amazon and Twitch technologies. Amazon Games has committed itself to supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion within the company and throughout the game industry as a whole, and these hackathons are intended to provide student developers from under-represented communities opportunities for mentorship, learning, and networking.
Each event will be hosted alongside a non-profit organization dedicated to empowering young and diverse talent, including the 1,000 Dreams Fund, the Entertainment Software Association Foundation, and Year Up. The hackathons, held in cities across the United States, will provide budding developers in high school and college the opportunity to gain valuable coding experience, and to connect with software development engineers from Amazon and Twitch for technical and career insights.
Participants will compete in teams of four, with each team receiving guidance from professional software development engineers throughout the event. Competitors will be judged on criteria including originality and creativity, complexity and code elegance, simplicity and ease of use, market potential and growth, and completion, with the top projects earning prizes from a panel of judges from Amazon and Twitch.
The first hackathon will take place on Saturday, September 14 at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, and will be hosted by the 1,000 Dreams Fund, a non-profit organization that empowers young women through grants and mentorship opportunities. Additional hackathons will take place in Washington, D.C. on October 19 (hosted by the ESA Foundation), and San Francisco on November 2 (hosted by Year Up).
The full hackathon schedule is as follows:
- September 14 - New Haven, Connecticut (at Yale University) - Hosted by 1,000 Dreams Fund
- October 19 - Washington, D.C. - Hosted by the ESA Foundation
- November 2 - San Francisco, California - Hosted by Year Up
Interested students can register by visiting https://1000dreamsfund.org/programs/hackathon/.
