by Tyna Callahan | Aug 17, 2017 | Meetups & Events
Zenko++ is Sean Jones, Lijun Wang, Can Yildirim and Aaron Hunt
The Zenko++ team is using Zenko to connect to the Google cloud. Their application feeds data to Zenko so that Zenko can send data to Google via an AWS S3 interface. The team’s Lijun Wang, Can Yildirim, Sean Jones and Aaron Hunt wanted to make an easy way to feed data to Google Cloud.
Originally from China, Lijun earned a Bachelor’s degree in journalism from Bohai University there, and then studied accou nting after coming to the U.S. about eight years ago. She learned about the 42 school via social media, and joined its first U.S. campus students in September of 2016. This is her forst hackathon – she’s ecited to earn a Zenko sticker!
Can (a Turkish name that’s pronounced Jon) is a California native. He was attending community college for his GE degree and taking computer science classes when he read an article about 42’s programming school. He was immediately interested and excited about this wildly alternative program. Fortunately for him, his father was really supportive, and encouraged him to pursue it. Can took part in the very first evaluation program (Piscine) for the U.S. school, and joined its first class after the Piscine. This isn’t his first hackathon (but we’re hopeful that it’s his favorite).
Sean was born and raised in Texas, then found his way to Hungary to go to theatre school there. When he returned to the U.S. he went back to Mechanical Engineering, something he had developed an interest in in high school, doing robotics competitions. He decided to pursue programming because, while he could build a great robot, others “told” it what to do. He wanted to be able to do that. It’s another piece of the puzzle for Sean. His brother-in-law read about the school, and encouraged Sean to give it a shot. It sounded too good to be true, but he came (and yes, it’s true) and he’s enjoyed his first year of hacking.
Aaron was studying electrical engineering in New York, but wasn’t loving it. He left that program and got a good full-time job as an electrician. Great job, but he couldn’t see a future in it, so he decided to go back to school. He took a programing course and just loved it. Looking forward, focusing on that seemed to him to be a great idea. When he heard about 42, he took a month off from work to join a Piscine, even though the whole idea of 42 seemed a bit unreal. He says that the tuition-free program with no-cost dorm living space were hard enough to believe, but he had a really hard time convincing friends and family that the program’s goal wasn’t just to turn him into a profitable coding machine for them. He’s impressed by the fact that what he develops while a student there, he owns. The school does not assume rights to a student’s IP.
by Tyna Callahan | Aug 17, 2017 | Meetups & Events
Team Los Billanos: EugenioRodriguez, Abraham Nieto, Jose Ramon Aleman and Gerardo Solis
Los Billanos is building a graphical user interface for UTAPI. The team’s four members Eugenio Rodriguez, Abraham Nieto, Jose Ramon Aleman and Gerardo Solis are working with the goal of making it easier to get a view of the status of data at a glance by displaying it graphically as an alternative to the standard text-based terminal view.
Eugenio graduated from Penn State University wits a B.S. in Engineering Science, with a focus on nanotechnology. After college, he returned to his home in the Dominican Republic, but decided to come back to the U.S., this time to San Francisco, where his sister lives. His plan was to find a good bootcamp and learn to program, but he heard about 42, and since he was already in the area, he decided to give 42 a try. He started the program in November, having done his Piscine in October. This is his first full hackathon.
Abraham is from strawberry country; Watsonville, California. He holds a B.S. in Digital Media from U.C. Santa Cruz, but, after he finished it, he decided that he wanted to be an engineer. He supported himself with odd jobs while he self-studied Web development, but he wanted to go deeper. The program at 42 gave him just that. He started in September, 2016,, and has put all of his energy into learning to program. He’s done a couple of San Francisco hackathons before and a Game Jam at Facebook.
Jose Ramon Studies Informatics Engineering at Latin University of Panama, and earned a B.S. in Mechatronics Engineering. He has worked as a freelance Web designer, but entered the program at 42 because he wanted to go more in-depth. He actually learned about 42 from a friend with whom he came to the month-long Piscine (a vetting period). His friend enjoyed the Piscine as much as Jose Ramon enjoyed it, but ended up not staying because it was too difficult for him to change course at the time. Jose Ramon, though, was ready and able, so he started in November, 2016. He has done a few other hackathons: a Space App challenge in Panama and two others at 42.
Gerardo is from Mexico City, where he attended Instituto Politecnico Nacional and earned a degree in Engineering and Computer Science. He found 42 on Facebook, and knew immediately that he wanted to be there. He sees quite clearly what a great opportunity it presents. This is just his second hackathon; the first was also here at the school.
by Tyna Callahan | Aug 17, 2017 | Meetups & Events
Team ft_gcp: Tom Zhou, Alexander Chan and Min Kim
Team ft_gcp is building a client that allows S3 to interface with Google, so users can push data to the Google cloud and manage it using Zenko and S3. Team members Alexander Chan, Tom Zhou and Min Kim are just putting the finishing touches on their work.
From Los Angeles, Alexander has a B.S. in Computer Science, but had been working as an accountant. Not finding that especially fulfilling, he decided to go back to tech, and learning to program seemed like a good choice. He happen upon 42 school when browsing the Internet and thought it might be a good choice for him. He started in November. He’s a hackathon veteran – he won 2nd place in a Motorola hackathon.
Tom is from Massachusetts, but was working in the Bay Area, for a biotech company, when he decided to pivot to 42. He holds a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Washington University in St. Louis. Working at the biotech company doing lab work and data analysis, he was interested in programming, and thought that might be a way that he could have more impact. He had looked at bootcamps, but in addition to being expensive, most also seemed to focus on Web development, which wasn’t what he was looking for. He heard about 42 from a friend, so decided to give it a try, and he loved (and loves) it!
Min came to the U.S. just 6 months ago, from Korea. In Korea, he had been managing a restaurant, prior to which he spent a year in the army. His brother lives here, and told him about 42, so Min went about doing what he needed to do to make it happen. He’s currently a student at two schools: Ohlone Community College, where he studies computer science, and 42, where he’s learning to program.
by Tyna Callahan | Aug 17, 2017 | Meetups & Events
Big D(ata): Zack Smith
Zack Smith is Big D(ata), and he’s working to build a streaming log to make managing large amounts of streaming data easier. Rather than writing individual pipelines, his program manages data flow to dependent processes so that the dependent systems (consumers) know when the data they need to act on is available.
Having worked as an economist doing data analysis, Zack knows the importance of efficient data management. Originally from Pittsburgh, Zack attended Carnegie Mellon University, where he earned a B.S. in Economics. Working in the field of economics, though, he found that he was frustrated by working on “old stuff” and wanted to be able to create things—to invent. He thought that programming would enhance his ability to do that. Initially, he looked at Bootcamps, but found them to be costly. He came across 42 in his searches, and decided to invest a month in deciding if it was right for him, so took time off from work to do the Piscine. That was almost a year ago, and Zack spent that year here in Silicon Valley. And he’s staying. He’s finishing up at the school soon, but definitely wants to stay to work in the tech hub and remain in this exhilarating and inventive community.
by Tyna Callahan | Aug 17, 2017 | Meetups & Events
Team Video: Robert Passafaro, Wiley Debs and Andie Pha
Team Video is made up of three self-proclaimed mediaphiles. Wiley Debs, Andie Pha and Robert Passafaro decided to build an automated video transcoder with Zenko Backbeat and the HandBreak open source video transcoder. At upload, the Video team’s application will transcode video into all of the required formats for consumption from multiple devices.
Wiley learned about 42 through a cyberpunk blog, NODE. He’d been to college and done general coursework, but was out in the workforce, and not finding his ideal work. After a couple of less than satisfying sales and customer service jobs, he decided that he wanted to do something else, and programming seemed interesting. He heard about 42, and traveled to Northern California from the Tampa Bay area to give it a try. Soon to finish his first year, he’s really enjoying the program and looking forward to finding an internship soon.
Andie must be tired of rocket scientist jokes, but if the shoe fits… He has a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from Cal Poly Pomona, and worked for an aerospace manufacturing company in Los Angeles before he came to 42. He learned about 42 through Facebook. He wasn’t specifically drawn to programming, but saw it as a chance to try something new. His teammate Robert says that Andie that he tells them all the time, “I don’t computer, I can code, though.”
Robert is from Northern New Jersey, where he went to community college and earned a certificate degree, but credits the work he did growing a small company’s web commerce business with fueling his interest in programming; he used a little bit of C++ in his website work. After three years, that website work paid off, in a big way. He grew their web commerce business 16-fold.
by Tyna Callahan | Aug 17, 2017 | Meetups & Events
Zensational: Justin Pfefferle, Kyle Davis and William Lee
Zensational is building an auto-tag generator for graphics files using Zenko and TensorFlow. When a user uploads a graphic to storage, their application goes to work, using AI to determine what the image is and apply meaningful tags. The team’s members are Justin Pfefferle, Kyle Davis and William Lee.
Justin has been at 42 for just under a year. He lives in the dorms and is working through the levels as he looks forward to his wife and daughter making the move from Boise to the Bay Area to join him soon in an off-campus home. Justin studied mathematics at Boise State, thinking he would teach high-level Math someday. When he decided to get into tech instead, he took several contract positions, including doing technical support for cellular providers and even training Apple employees, and supplemented those by driving for Uber. His interest in technology made his decision to join 42 an easy one – he found it and knew it was for him.
Kyle earned a Bachelor’s degree in Genetics from U.C. Davis. Working as a Jr. Specialist in a lab at a research hospital in Sacramento, he found that what he enjoyed most about his job was writing macros to streamline tasks and operations in spreadsheets, so started to think that programming was more his style than lab-based research. He learned about 42 from his father, who had read about it in Forbes article that was published the Spring before he enrolled. He didn’t waste any time – he was already looking-into taking programming courses at community college, and this seemed like a great alternative. He loves the collaborative environment: teaching others and learning from them as well, as everyone works at their own pace. And, It’s in familiar territory. Kyle’s from Newark, the next town over from 42’s Fremont campus, and his family lives there still.
William was at U.C. Davis at the same time Kyle was there, but they never crossed paths there. William was studying Biochemisty, and earned his Bachelor of Science degree in that field. After that, he moved to Paradise Valley, Arizona to work on developing a game with a friend. His friend was the coder; he was the writer. His friend heard about 42, and was taking their online puzzle test, which sparked William’s competitive spirit, so he did it too. They both enjoyed the puzzle and did well, but couldn’t believe that the school was real. Nevertheless, they decided to give it a try. He describes that first month, Piscine, as a great experience – hectic, but fun.
