Benjamin Chen (陳昱安) didn’t know how intense a hackathon could be.
“You literally work non-stop. You don’t eat breakfast, you don’t eat lunch because you really need to finish the product,” the 10th-grader from Taipei American School says. “You feel the adrenaline rushing… It’s refreshing, I was like a new person.”
Chen became fascinated by these round-the-clock competitions to create technology or software products, and participated in 10 more before he decided to start one that focused on his twin passions of economics and technology. He says there are many hackathons that delve into social and environmental issues, but few have economics as the main theme, not to mention student-led and focused ones.
Photo courtesy of Benjamin Chen
He fondly recalls his first hackathon, where he and two teammates designed a phone app that allows people to earn virtual currency within the game by walking, encouraging them to reduce their carbon footprint.
He called up a friend who has organized several hackathons, and recruited an international team. Thousands of calls and e-mails to various institutions and companies later, and they had enough sponsors and guest speakers to make it a reality. Chen expects about 500 people to participate in the event, dubbed EconHacks, which will take place over 24 hours starting at noon on Feb. 13. Speakers will be presenting throughout the day on topics ranging from economic policy, financing a startup and virtual reality app-building. Participation is virtual and free to all 8th to 12th graders.
“The most important thing was getting the sponsors because people won’t join if you don’t have good prizes,” Chen says. Worth over NT$6.4 million, the prizes include cash rewards, various course and program subscriptions, promo codes as well as internship, exposure and funding opportunities through well-known tech-companies.
Though the specific theme will be announced during the opening ceremony, the core idea is to improve an aspect of the financial sector or help solve a current economic problem, especially anything related to COVID-19. The hackers will then form groups of one to four and begin work on a prototype.
“They’re going to be working the whole time, they’re not going to sleep and at the end they’re going to pitch their idea within a three-minute video,” Chen says.
Chen says his interest in economics was inspired by his father, who works in finance.
“Basically every conversation I have with my dad is about finance or economics, so from a very young age he expected me to do a finance job. But it’s not because he forced me or anything, I just find it very interesting and rewarding.”
Chen says the pitiful financial literacy of millennials also highlights the need to educate more young people on economics and especially how it relates to technology.
As more operations and ventures are moving online due to COVID-19, it’s important to understand this economic shift. Chen says that he hopes EconHacks will give young people more opportunities to think about such issues while rewarding the ones who are already passionate about them.
This is the year that the demographic crisis will begin to impact people’s lives. This will create pressures on treatment and hiring of foreigners. Regardless of whatever technological breakthroughs happen, the real value will come from digesting and productively applying existing technologies in new and creative ways. INTRODUCING BASIC SERVICES BREAKDOWNS At some point soon, we will begin to witness a breakdown in basic services. Initially, it will be limited and sporadic, but the frequency and newsworthiness of the incidents will only continue to accelerate dramatically in the coming years. Here in central Taiwan, many basic services are severely understaffed, and
Jan. 5 to Jan. 11 Of the more than 3,000km of sugar railway that once criss-crossed central and southern Taiwan, just 16.1km remain in operation today. By the time Dafydd Fell began photographing the network in earnest in 1994, it was already well past its heyday. The system had been significantly cut back, leaving behind abandoned stations, rusting rolling stock and crumbling facilities. This reduction continued during the five years of his documentation, adding urgency to his task. As passenger services had already ceased by then, Fell had to wait for the sugarcane harvest season each year, which typically ran from
It is a soulful folk song, filled with feeling and history: A love-stricken young man tells God about his hopes and dreams of happiness. Generations of Uighurs, the Turkic ethnic minority in China’s Xinjiang region, have played it at parties and weddings. But today, if they download it, play it or share it online, they risk ending up in prison. Besh pede, a popular Uighur folk ballad, is among dozens of Uighur-language songs that have been deemed “problematic” by Xinjiang authorities, according to a recording of a meeting held by police and other local officials in the historic city of Kashgar in
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) was out in force in the Taiwan Strait this week, threatening Taiwan with live-fire exercises, aircraft incursions and tedious claims to ownership. The reaction to the PRC’s blockade and decapitation strike exercises offer numerous lessons, if only we are willing to be taught. Reading the commentary on PRC behavior is like reading Bible interpretation across a range of Christian denominations: the text is recast to mean what the interpreter wants it to mean. Many PRC believers contended that the drills, obviously scheduled in advance, were aimed at the recent arms offer to Taiwan by the
RSS