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.
