The Black Enterprise 2016 BE Smart Hackathon, sponsored by Toyota and part of the TechConneXt Summit held in Silicon Valley, is a 24- to 36-hour hackathon in which 10 teams of four college students each develop an app and compete for prizes.

The students enjoyed an all-expenses-paid experience that included a fun ice-breaker activity as well as several skill-building workshops, in addition to opportunities to meet sponsors and summit attendees. Charged with creating an In-Vehicle Infotainment (IVI) iOS app within the Ionic Cloud framework, each team submitted concept documents and storyboards before the hackathon began.

Four judges assessed the students’ apps in light of their projected impact, innovation, and technical achievement, as well as the students’ ability to work as a team. After meeting with each of the teams one-on-one, the judges selected the top three teams to present: Alabama A&M University, North Carolina A&T State University, and Tuskegee University.

The winning team, Team Aggie ++ from North Carolina A&T State University, won the judges over with its Let’s Go Black app, which helps users customize a road trip that explores important sites in African American history. Each team member of Team Aggie ++ received a GoPro tablet from AT&T, 40K miles from American Airlines, a Fossil Q smart watch from Intel, a FitBit Blaze smart watch from FitBit, and a Yoga 3 Pro tablet/laptop device from Lenovo.