Morgan State hackathon: 3 winning teams at tech event hosted by Black Founders

I found out about Black Founders‘ HBCU Hackathon Tour in February. They had just hosted their first event in Atlanta and were promoting their second in Washington, D.C. I attended as a mentor. After experiencing the D.C. hackathon, I practically begged Hadiyah Mujhid of Black Founders to hold their next tour stop in Baltimore at my alma mater, Morgan State University. They were all for it.
Read about the winning teams from the Morgan State hackathon below.
The event was held over weekend in Morgan’s engineering building. I had the privilege of hosting it on behalf of the Given.to team. My cofounders, McKeever Conwell and Michael Washington, also attended Morgan, so it means a lot for us to be able to give back to our university by sharing our experiences and exposing students to tech entrepreneurship.

We convinced 25 students to give up a Friday night for a chance to hang out with us and stay up through Saturday afternoon forming teams, turning app ideas into functional prototypes and pitching in front of a panel of judges. Students also heard several brief talks on topics such as what startups are, how to validate an idea and career opportunities in tech. Mac, who is currently in San Francisco working as the entrepreneur-in-residence for the NewME Accelerator, led one such talk via Google Hangout.
The event attracted a mixed crowd, including computer science , graphic design, business and engineering majors. Most had either never heard of or never attended a hackathon before.
Winning teams from the Morgan State University hackathon:
1st Place ($500 prize): Zsource Fighter
A cross-platform, MMO (massively multi-player online) game where users explore a custom-designed virtual world and fight opponents as custom-designed characters inspired by college mascots. Their demo pitted Morgan State’s Benny Bear against cross-town rival, Towson University’s Towson Tiger.

2nd Place ($200 prize): Spiel
A web app that matches “spielers” with “listeners” in private video-conferencing sessions that can be used to get personal feedback on ideas, to practice interpersonal communication skills, or to speak privately with qualified professional counselors about personal issues.

3rd Place ($100 prize): Coding For Kids
An interactive, web-based platform that breaks basic programming concepts down to a level that children can understand in an effort to engage them in technology education at an early age.

Sponsors for the Morgan State hackathon were LCG Technologies, 1sqbox, Blacks in Technology and Software Theoretic.