Last weekend, the C. F. União de Coimbra Pavilion welcomed the 250 participants of Shift APPens, a 48-hour hackathon organised by Núcleo de Estudantes de Informática da Associação Académica de Coimbra and jeKnowledge, FCTUC’s Junior Enterprise.
In this 10th edition, the team made up of João Torre Pereira and Diogo Fernandes (L.EIC 3rd year) and Linda Albuquerque and Rafael Fernandes (Master’s in Design and Multimedia at FCTUC), won the 2nd place with the project BookShifter – Shift your head in the right direction, a mobile application that avoids tilting the head when exploring books in a bookshop/library. The mobile phone camera is used to read the books on the shelf and to get all the information about them without having to open them.
The pitch presented to the jury and the demo can be seen here.
Luis Duarte (L.EIC 3rd year) and Rubem Neto (L.EIC 2nd year) were also awarded prizes in challenges organised by the companies GoodBarber and RedLight, respectively. All L.EIC students mentioned are members of NIAEFEUP, Núcleo de Informática da Associação de Estudantes da FEUP.
As well as being a programming and entrepreneurship competition, where teams of up to four elements develop a project in the field of technology over 48 hours, Shift APPens is also the stage for talks, workshops, mentoring, contact with companies, personalised challenges, prizes, games, socialising and, of course, lots of fun.