As the world comes to rely on more digital offerings, one local entrepreneur is hoping the latest will help further place Tampa Bay on a national stage.
"The world is going virtual this year," Cal Tiger, the organizer behind the Sunshine State Hack, said. "Virtual tech, it's here to stay and that's the only way to compete with big Silicon Valley companies. The whole tech club with Facebook, Alphabet, they all have a huge stake in this online economy."
Tiger is launching the Sunshine State Hack hackathon, which takes place August 19-21 with registration ending Aug. 10. The hackathon is challenging anyone to come up with an innovative solution for Covid-19, which could span a slew of industries such as health care or financial technology.
"It's not all doom and gloom — this virus is a bad thing, obviously," Tiger said. "But the only way we're going to deal with this is to come together as a group of innovators, software developers, startups and small businesses to deal with this problem."
Tiger said so far 82 teams have registered for the hackathon, with participants from other countries including India and Brazil. The first place prize winner will receive $5,000, with the second place receiving $3,000 and the third place receiving $1,000. He is hopeful to turn this into a quarterly event.
He also hopes this will spur local companies to get more involved with innovation as a whole.
"A lot of people don't understand — they see KnowBe4 (for example) is a huge company but don't understand what's under the hood," Tiger said. "The whole process of innovation is exciting to me but big companies aren't paying attention to it; it's about their ROI. By bringing hackathons to the table, companies can potentially sponsor this innovation."
And Tiger believes this is the first example of many to showcase to the world the tech talent Tampa Bay has to offer.
"(People) have talked about building the next Silicon Valley here but you have to have a highly skilled set of people and attract the best," he said. "We're able to attract people out of the woodwork by holding things like this. The only way for us to compete with Silicon Valley is to demonstrate we're in the position to come up with innovative products and show companies that we have funding to do it."
