Update: The hackathon will start at 9 AM on Saturday, September 28, and end at 4 PM on Sunday, September 29.

Join forces with your fellow students to collaborate and innovate for social good. Over the course of a weekend, you’ll be challenged to work on unique problems impacting the affordable housing issue. You’ll be provided with the tools, support, and data needed so you can write the code to right the world.

Participating students will receive mentorship from Google Cloud, LISC Jacksonville, The Link, and UNF experts. Three finalist teams will be selected and announced as winners during the AI For Good award ceremony. Top teams will also have the opportunity to partner with data science experts to bring their solutions to life.

Join our hackathon, build your team, ask questions, and engage with mentors!

In preparation for the hackathon, we encourage you to focus on one of these two problem cases:

Problem Case #1: Apartment Scams: Detect nefarious actors in online housing search sites and estimate financial damages to victims in Duval County

Problem Case #2: Heirs Property: Identify and estimate households vulnerable to heirs’ property issues in Duval County

Food and beverages (brain fuel) will be provided during the event.

Hackathon Location:

The Link

Address: 425 Town Plaza Ave, Ponte Vedra Beach, FL 32081

The Link is an environment that fosters creativity, productivity, and human development. It is a premier coworking and event space with dedicated and floating desks, community spaces, lounges, and meeting rooms. The Link has facilities for showering and refreshing for event attendees.

The hackathon organizers will allocate a meeting room as a quiet space for attendees to rest and recover. The Link or the hackathon organizers will not provide sleeping provisions.

Participants are responsible for travel and accommodation costs. 

Meet the Partners

Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is a suite of cloud computing services offered by Google that provides a series of modular cloud services, including computing, data storage, data analytics, and machine learning, alongside a set of management tools. It runs on the same infrastructure that Google uses internally for its end-user products, such as Google Search, Gmail, and Google Docs.

Google offers a complete data foundation to unify all workloads and manage the entire data life cycle. The solution is designed to run data anywhere, so you can leverage your data across all clouds, on-premises, and access it in the most popular SaaS (Software as a Service) apps. This solution is built with and for AI, so you can get the latest tools for machine learning analysis, prompting, tuning, training, and deploying custom foundation models—all connected to your business data. Google Cloud helps developers build quickly, securely, and cost-effectively with the next generation of modern infrastructure designed to meet specific workloads and industry needs. For more information, visit https://cloud.google.com/

LISC Jacksonville is one of 38 local offices of the national Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), the largest community development organization in the United States. LISC Jacksonville is dedicated to transforming local neighborhoods into healthy and sustainable communities of choice and opportunity - good places to live, work, do business, and raise a family. We fund initiatives and projects that promote neighborhood revitalization, family wealth creation, and community advocacy. We support families, businesses, and organizations in Duval County by providing tools, resources, and funding. For more information, visit https://www.lisc.org/jacksonville/

The Link is a space that inspires visitors of all ages to “learn, play, think, and do.” The state-of-the-art building in Ponte Vedra’s Nocatee neighborhood offers unique amenities and an overall otherworldly experience for guests attending - or hosting - an event.

The 22,500 sq ft building features open workspace and office space on level two and activity flex spaces on level one—empowering you to have an innovative place to work while doing activities you love. An innovation and activity hub approximately 30 minutes south of Jacksonville downtown and north of historic downtown St. Augustine, the Link has offerings for all ages and, has several event spaces available to rent. To learn more about the Link, visit https://www.thelink.zone/

Florida Data Science for Social Good (FL-DSSG) program blends data science and technology design to inform and solve important social problems in Florida. We accomplish this goal by partnering with non-profit and public sector organizations in Florida, analyzing their data, and finding impactful solutions to social issues. The FL-DSSG program provides internships and research opportunities for students from diverse disciplines to work on data science projects along with our community partners. Non-profit and public-sector organizations receive data analysis and visualization reports supporting their work in the Florida communities. Florida DSSG is hosted at the University of North Florida (UNF). For more information about the FL-DSSG, visit https://dssg.unf.edu/. 

AI4Good Hackathon Schedule

Saturday, September 28

Hackathon begins. Full day of coding and hacking remainder of the day and through the night

8:30 AM – Breakfast [First floor]

9 AM – Kickoff event [First floor – near the stage]

9:15 AM – Introduction to problem cases and overview of Google Cloud

10 AM – Teams are formed, and primary datasets will be shared with hackathon participants.

11 AM - Mentoring session on problem understanding [Second floor]

12 PM – Lunch [First floor]

2 PM - Mentoring session on solution approach [Second floor]

6:30 PM – Dinner [First floor]

7 PM - Mentoring session on solution implementation [Second floor]

Sunday, September 29

Last hours of hacking and conducting performance evaluations until noon.

9 AM – Breakfast [First floor]

12 PM - Submit solutions to Devpost. Presentation order selections.

12 PM – Lunch [First floor]

1 PM to 3:30 PM - Team presentations [First floor]

3:30 PM - Hackathon Winner Award ceremony and event closing [First floor]

Mentoring Sessions

Saturday, September 28

11 AM to 12 PM - Katie Bakewell (NLP Logix), Brian Ferdman (CSX), Rachel Lewis (Medical Solutions), Sandeep Reddivari (UNF Computing), Dan Richard (UNF Psychology), and Jacqueline Shelly (PGA Tour)

2 PM to 3 PM - Michelle DeDeo (UNF Statistics), Rachel Lewis (Medical Solutions), Indika Kahanda (UNF Computing), Harsha Nalla (NLP Logix), and Sandeep Reddivari (UNF Computing)

7 PM to 8 PM - Katie Bakewell (NLP Logix), Brian Ferdman (CSX), Karthika Gopalakrishnan (CGI), Rachel Lewis (Medical Solutions), Xudong Liu (UNF Computing), and Dan Richard (UNF Psychology)

For more information about the AI4Good Hackathon event and organizer information, please visit 2024 Hackathon page.

• Evaluation Criteria
  Each participating team will be evaluated on their model performance and presentation of the results. The hackathon winners will be determined based on the evaluation factor weightings and scores received below.
• Presentation (20%)
  * Delivery of content (articulation, composure) * Appearance of content (clear and helpful visuals) * Organization of content * Q&A responses * Explanation of impact on stakeholders (e.g., The Link, LISC Jacksonville) * Suggested next steps
• Model Performance (40%)
  * Communicate performance results * Technical terms explained
• Solution Approach (40%)
  * Originality/Creativity * Clearly defined positive impact on the environment * Feasibility to scale solution * Operational impact on problem case owners and affected population groups
• Scoring Ratings
  5 = Excellent presentation on all counts 4 = Very good presentation with minor issues 3 = Pitch can be significantly improved but is satisfactory overall 2 = Pitch is incomplete and severely lacking 1 = Presenter fails to address the criteria