LA bid leaders praise showcase of California’s spirit of innovation and connection with youth culture
Photos: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1356850/LAHacks1.jpg
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1356850/LAHacks2.jpg
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1356850/LAHacks3.jpg
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1356850/LAHacks4.jpg
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1356850/LAHacks5.jpg
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1356850/LAHacks6.jpg
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8tCVGWBzzI
LOS ANGELES - This weekend, more than one thousand high school and college students from across the United States descended upon UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion, the site of LA 2024’s proposed volleyball venue, for LA Hacks, a collaborative computer programming event sponsored by LA 2024 that offered promising technology possibilities for 2024. Bid leaders hailed the event as a reflection of LA 2024’s approach to harnessing California's creativity, innovation and connection with youth culture.
Student programmers worked intensively around the clock on software and hardware across a variety of categories. This included LA 2024 categories on sports entertainment and fitness, with the top two entries winning courtside Los Angeles Clippers and UCLA basketball tickets. All entries that fell under the LA 2024 categories provided valuable insights into the way youth audiences engage with sporting events. LA’s bid leaders will look to how these ideas can assist them in delivering a New Games for a new era to inspire a whole new generation around the Olympic values of friendship, respect and excellence.
UCLA students Weijia Yu, Zhao Yang, and Pei Zhang won LA 2024's category on sports entertainment and fitness by designing a virtual reality television experience for fans viewing the Olympic and Paralympic Games. The project aims to provide viewers with an interactive social experience by aggregating live data of viewing preferences, and matching viewers who have shared interests. Visit http://devpost.com/software/vr-social-tv-for-olymipics for more information on their submission.
UCLA students Kai Matsuka, Anny Lin, and Donovan Fung and USC student Jason Lin were runners-up in LA 2024's sports technology competition, designing wearable technology hardware which they dubbed "Olympic BPM." Olympic BPM is a wristband that measures fans' heart rates and movements during live sporting events using sensors in the band. Fans' wristbands are connected with their seats, which light up in different colors that correspond with the fans' mood (for example, an excited fan might have a red seat, while a relaxed fan might have a blue one, creating a real-time visual representation of the audience's reactions). Olympic BPM wristbands are also connected to a smartphone app, which allows users to see color-coded visual representations of audience reactions during any sporting event. Visit http://devpost.com/software/olympic-bpm for more information on their submission.
All LA Hacks submissions can be viewed at http://lahacks2016.devpost.com/submissions
LA 2024 Chairman Casey Wasserman and eight-time Olympic medalist and LA 2024 Athletes’ Advisory Commission Member Apolo Ohno delivered keynotes at LA Hacks’ opening ceremony. The Candidature Committee also hosted a panel discussion that touched on the intersection of sport and technology, featuring US Olympians John Moffet and Sky Christopherson, Laundry Service Chief Innovative Officer Ross Sheingold, and LA 2024 Associate Director of Athlete Relations Tamara Christopherson.
LA Hacks is in its third year, and this year’s event attracted more than 1,000 students hailing from an international array of elite universities, including UCLA, USC, Stanford, California Institute of Technology, University of Pennsylvania, ETH Zurich, and the University of Toronto. In addition to Wasserman and Ohno, speakers included Adam Singolda, CEO of Taboola, as well as Josh Brener and Amanda Crew, stars of HBO’s award-winning comedy, "Silicon Valley." Past speakers have included Evan Spiegel, CEO of Snapchat, and Alexis Ohanian, Co-Founder of Reddit.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said: "I’d like to congratulate the LA Hacks organizers for gathering some of our nation’s brightest students in the City of Angels for a tremendous weekend of creativity and community spirit. The students attending LA Hacks this weekend embody the quintessentially Californian values of optimism, creativity and innovation. LA 2024 is proud to be harnessing California’s leadership in technology to deliver a Games for the next generation."
LA 2024 Chairman Casey Wasserman said: "As someone who has seen a lot of basketball games at UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion, I am fully confident saying LA Hacks was a slam dunk for LA 2024. From the start, LA 2024 has been committed to leveraging the City of Angels’ ready-made connection with youth culture to deliver a new Games for a new era. As a global capital of entertainment and technology, Los Angeles speaks to youth on a daily basis. This weekend, the youth spoke to us and imagined promising technology applications for 2024. We have been honored to partner with LA Hacks for this outstanding event. We are excited by the ideas that were born this weekend, and eager to see how they can fit into our Games Plan to ensure that LA 2024 will be the most technologically cutting-edge Games in history."
LA Hacks Executive Director and current UCLA junior Ashvin Vinodh said: "As an Olympic superfan with a keen interest in seeing the Games engage my generation, it was a privilege to partner with LA 2024 for LA Hacks 2016. LA Hacks is all about providing students with the resources they need to push their minds to the limit and build something amazing. In many ways, that’s what the LA 2024 team is doing as they work to bring the Games back to the United States for the first time in 28 years. We’re excited to have had the opportunity to for LA 2024, and we look forward to seeing how the candidature committee continues to incorporate innovation and technology into its Games plan."
Chief Innovation Technology Officer for the City of Los Angeles Peter Marx said: "As an Angeleno and Bruin who was on campus at UCLA for the 1984 Olympics, I am very much looking forward to seeing how today's innovators will make the LA 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games the most immersive and fun athletic experience the world has ever seen. LA Hacks offered a taste of what is possible when California’s brightest minds come together and work towards a common goal."
For more information visit LAhacks.com and LA24.org.
LA 2024 can also be found on the following social media channels:
Twitter.com/LA2024
Facebook.com/LA2024
Instagram.com/LA2024
YouTube.com/LA2024
20 Years at #1: Your best source of news about the Olympics is www.aroundtherings.com, for subscribers only
Últimas Noticias
Brigitte Henriques: “The important thing is that the women who are elected should be chosen for their ability, not because we are looking for modernization in terms of gender”
“When I was a girl I couldn’t find a club to play soccer in because most of them didn’t work with women,” Henriques tells Around the Rings during an in-depth interview in Crete, Greece.
The Hula Report: Winds of Change for ANOC in Crete
New leaders coming for peak Olympic group. Whether other candidates emerge in the months ahead, a contested election for the ANOC presidency will be a first for the organization.
Gilles Gilbert Gresenguet, presidential candidate for AFCNO: “We must take advantage of Paris 2024 to bring the Olympic Games back to French”
The elections take place November 18, and Abakar Djermah Aumi, president of the Chad Olympic Committee, is also aiming to win them.
USOPC announces 613-member 2020 U.S. Olympic Team
Roger Federer pulls out of Tokyo Olympics: "I am greatly disappointed"
(ATR) Federer cites "a setback with my knee" for the decision.
