Tijuana Innovadora hackathon draws hundreds

The lighting was poor, the air a bit suffocating, but hundreds of aspiring software programmers were glad to spend Wednesday hunched over their laptop computers inside a cavernous indoor parking garage in the city’s Río Zone. A “Mega-Hackathon” drew an unprecedented crowd of Tijuana competitors, mostly students from local universities eager to learn and to test their skills.

“It’s exciting to see so many programmers working,” said Jorge Silvano Perez, 18, a student at the Autonomous University of Baja California who dreams of finding a job with Google. “To a greater or lesser extent, we are all trying to do something. That is very exciting.”

As a new generation prepares to enter Tijuana’s evolving labor market, growing numbers are aiming for professions that require knowledge of technology. The ten-day Tijuana Innovadora conference on Wednesday incorporated both the hackathon and a series of programs aimed at the tech-minded university crowd, touching on subjects such as educational game platforms, augmented reality, mobile phone apps, female leadership in technology, and startups.

The funding and organization of the events, which included a keynote speech Tuesday night by underwater archaeologist Guillermo de Anda, came courtesy of the Autonomous University of Chihuahua’s CampusLink program.

“This whole idea of a hackathon is something that really draws in the new generation,” said Carlos Castañeda, coordinator of information technology programs at the Chihuahua university. The aim of Wednesday’s competition was in part “to discover talent here at the border,” Castañeda said. Qualcomm was among the event’s sponsors.

Organizers had promoted their hackathon at universities in Tijuana and San Diego, hoping draw more than 2,600 participants, including a sizable group from north of the border. The final count was considerably smaller: 750 competitors showed up early Wednesday, organizers said, and only two or three competitors came from the United States — but it was still the largest such event ever seen in the city.

Tijuana Innovadora aims to be a platform for progressive sides of the city — including technology, fashion and cuisine, and its organizers this year have linked up with a series of independent events. Among those is a Startup Weekend, where tech-minded entrepreneurs are expected to test their pitches Friday through Sunday at Hub Station, a new co-working space on Avenida Revolución.

On Wednesday morning, as hundreds of young hackers gathered in the bottom level of the parking garage of Plaza Pavilion, a separate crowd gathered across the street in the main theater of the Centro Cultural Tijuana to hear from San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer and Tijuana Mayor Jorge Astiazarán.

The mayors announced their plan to expand Tijuana Innovadora into a cross-border event in 2016 to showcase the binational region. “It’s not just about two cities,” Faulconer said in a news conference following the presentation, “but about one powerhouse economic region that benefits us all.”

Astiazarán said he plans to make Tijuana a “Smart City.” As part of that effort, the mayor announced that Tijuana City Hall is receiving a 28 million peso — about $2.1 million — grant from Mexico’s federal government that will help its offices go paperless.

“We are going to establish an e-government, and I think this will serve all residents of Tijuana,” he said.