A program that combined training, coding and competition was the hot ticket this week, when a hackfest drew programmers and coders from local, state and federal governments to downtown Sacramento.
Local computer programmers of all abilities attended the Azure Government HackFest + Training Event on Tuesday and Wednesday, ranging from newcomers to experienced developers, said Steve Michelotti, a senior program manager with Microsoft.
Tuesday’s sessions included training in cloud solutions and cognitive services within the Azure Government program, while Wednesday’s attendees worked on their solutions — the competition portion of the event.
The Azure hackfest was only the second in the nation, after a successful first event was held in Washington, D.C., in June. On the second day, each team was given a series of challenges for which to build solutions, culminating in final presentations and a social and networking hour.
“A lot of people here are brand new to cloud computing,” Michelotti noted.
Attendees learned that some services Azure offers could have a major impact on various government departments with a little imagination, Michelotti said. For instance, “CHIP,” the City Hall Internet Personality for the Los Angeles Business Assistance Virtual Network, was created using the Azure bot framework and the Azure government cloud in just two days. Michelotti said the bot reduces the number of calls and inquiries coming into City Hall and is an example of the type of bot framework and cognitive services Azure Government offers.
Manoj Reddy, an enterprise and solutions architect who attended the conference, found it “extremely helpful.” He and his colleagues are hoping to move their department’s data from an internal IT service to the cloud.
“It was very helpful and knowledgeable [on Tuesday], and [Wednesday] was hands-on,” Reddy said.
The event covered issues such as technical hardware, data science and artificial intelligence, Reddy said.
“It’s a shift to this new cloud system. People think it’s hard to work, with but these sessions help us,” he said. “It’s just a shift, that’s all it is.”
(Some participants declined to specify which California government agency employs them.)
First-place winners at the HackFest on the second day included Ashok Bhatla from the California Department of Technology, as well as Sitigui Ouattara, Paul Maknovski and Steve Breedlove.
“Some people here are using cloud for the first time,” Michelotti said. “I think it’s pretty cool watching people learn.”
