Grant Proposal

Tanzania-MIT Hackathon

MIT Public Service Center Grant Application 2013

Update 6/19/13

Jacob Cole

Electrical Eng. and Computer Science, English Literature minor, 2014

jcole@mit.edu, Cell: 858-740-6970

Title: Tanzania-MIT Hackathon

[Lead: Jacob Cole <jcole@mit.edu](mailto:jcole@mit.edu)>

Permanent Address:

12759 Via Felino

Del Mar, CA 92014

Term Address:

351 Massachusetts Ave

Cambridge, MA 02139

Adviser: Sally Susnowitz <susnowit@MIT.EDU>, Director, MIT Public Service Center

Table of Contents

I plan to travel to Tanzania in July 2013 where my mother, Lisa Cole, is an education volunteer in the US Peace Corps. On July 14-15, in a computer lab at the University of Dar es Salaam, I plan to hold the "Tanzania-MIT Hackathon” -- a midday through late evening programming event at which college and high school students who program and local developers will get together with me and work on fun computer science projects in a structured setting, like my friends and I often do at MIT. Further, we will have a live video chat link to a group of my friends at MIT and Harvard who will be doing the same, so the programmers in Tanzania can experience the wonderful and inspiring culture I am a part of in college, make new friends, and contribute to their educational and leadership experience. To plan the event, I am working with US Peace Corps IT team, the head of Tanzania’s chapter of the Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa, the director of the MIT Public Service Center, and the president of MIT Startlabs. The hope is to establish a model for holding “tele-hackathons” in 3rd world countries and lay the groundwork for future remote collaborative coding. Moreover, past experience indicates that broadcasting participants’ coding has the secondary effect of enabling ordinary programmers everywhere to gain a global following, and to try on the shoes of being an inspiring leader. Ultimately, we plan for our custom web platform for facilitating these events to become a permanent feature of MIT and Harvard’s online learning platform EdX.

[I request sponsorship](#h.jhqwmpes3g4h) of $5000 to up to $6600 to run the event, and recommendations for further sponsors. Top sponsors will gain naming rights to an event that’s expected to get heavy media attention in Tanzania and possibly worldwide, and all will get a chance to engage with top programmers at MIT and in Tanzania.

Public

#	Content	Link	Section	Status	Visibility	Source
1	[I believe that there is no better way to learn something than spending time with people who are doing it for fun. The story of this project begins over a year ago when, after the incredible 2012 Greylock Hackfest hackathon in San Francisco, I found myself inspired to write a blog post <www.jacobblog.tpclubs.com/2012/08/hackercasting-a-big-idea/](http://www.jacobblog.tpclubs.com/2012/08/hackercasting-a-big-idea/)> on what I saw to be a new paradigm for both programming and leadership education, which I affectionately named “HackerCasting.”	—	—	—	inherit	—
2	In it, I wrote in part:	—	—	—	inherit	—
3	[“I’ve been discussing the concept of ‘hackercasting’ ... basically, TwitchTV.com](http://www.twitch.tv/) for hackathons, a service that allows people to cast their screens while they are coding, also cast their audio/webcam data, and also display what keystrokes they’re making. By putting themselves on a stage, pros enable avid learners to watch and learn how they think, talk, and code. I think this is of utmost importance as it allows transmission of hacker culture, and it’s a keystone in ‘hacking’ culture and education (not to mention it’s a technically easy and low-hanging project)...

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