GSA Presents: Grace Hopper Day Hackathon!

When: Friday, December 9th, 2016
Where: NARA Innovation Hub, 700 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Register: On Eventbrite

The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) Digital Service team is excited to be hosting our next agency hackathon on December 9, 2016. Join coders from across the region as we come together in celebration of Grace Hopper’s birthday. Admiral “Amazing Grace” Hopper was one of the first programmers in the history of computers. As the creator of the first compiler for a programming language, it is largely due to her that programmers use “if/thens” instead of 1s and 0s today.

U.S. Navy photo of Commodore Rear Admiral Grace M. Hopper

Grace Hopper, United States Navy.

The event is open to the public and being held in the National Archives Innovation Hub in Washington, D.C. We will focus on diving into some open source code to redesign the GSA Open Technology portal, open.gsa.gov. This site is the current developer portal for all GSA data, APIs, and source code open to the public. The goal is to create a more visually appealing, user-friendly, and engaging site. Cash prizes will be awarded to the greatest contributions. Bring your laptop, and come ready to hack!

This hackathon is beginner friendly! GSA DS staff will be onsite and available for project related assistance and guidance. We’d like to highly encourage women, non-binary, and other underrepresented groups in tech to attend.

Lieutenant Grace Hopper at her desk in the Harvard Computation Laboratory, 1947, AC0324-0000033. Grace Murry Hopper Collection, NMAH.AC.0324, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian.

Check out the hackathon’s full details and register now.

This event has passed; read all about it here (includes links to team demo videos and presentation slide decks).

Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, also known as “Amazing Grace” and “the first lady of software,” was one of 21 Americans awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama on November 22, 2016. The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the Nation’s highest civilian honor, presented to individuals who have made especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors. Watch the 2016 ceremony, and learn about other recipients.

Black and white image of Grace Hopper standing in front of a COBOL class. The blackboard has a program written on it.

Grace Hopper teaching COBOL in 1961.

Learn more about the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA).

Read recent posts on data, APIs, and open source, and news about challenge and prize competitions and crowdsourcing & citizen science projects.

Learn how Challenge.gov (crowdsourced challenge and prize competitions) and CitizenScience.gov (crowdsourcing and citizen science projects) can help your agency meet its goals in serving the public.

Does your agency need help testing their mobile products? Contact our Federal CrowdSource Mobile Testing Program.