CajunCodeFest 5.0 Names Smart Community Winners

(Lafayette, LA) The fifth annual CajunCodeFest coding competition was held March 29 – April 1, 2017 in the University of Louisiana at Lafayette Research Park. The event, hosted by the Center for Business & Information Technologies at UL Lafayette and CGI brought over 100 participants together to transform local parish data into Smart Community engagement apps and tools. Participants included students (middle, high school and college), professional developers from local tech companies and community leaders. Local mentors from Waitr, the Lafayette Parish School Board, Halliburton and teachers helped the student teams during the competition.

Ten teams built Smart Community applications specifically designed to encourage citizen engagement in the Lafayette community. The winning teams took home $5,000 each and the winning student teams received Apple iPads.

First Place Winner - Popping and Locking the Stack, Team members: Hayes Guidry, Joseph “Alex” Fontenot, Blake Glaub, Joy Norwood, Ben Norwood, Connor Stanford, and Dillon Boudreaux

Runner Up/Team Favorite - Thrive or Die, Team members: Geoff Daily, Michelle Nguyen, Johnathon Wright, Demian Neidetcher, and Brian Stanford

Best College Student Team - Band of Squanchers, Team members: Andrew Yoshimura, Zachary Kirby, Keegan Lange, Chad Galloway, Ryan Baird, Jacob Bernard, Hoang Pham, Connor Lambert, Robert Indorf, and Austin Pohlmann

Best K-12 Team – David Thibodeaux STEM Magnet Academy Coding Krewe, Team members: Nolan Marone, Dylan Martin, Fernando Martinez, Marcos Garces, and Team mentors Austin Clark, Haliburton, Alex Lanclos, Waitr, and Justin Centanni, Lafayette Parish School Board Member