Social Impact Hacking at YHack with Scene Sight
A conversation with the winning team from Johnson & Wales University
Earlier this month, Chris Kuang and I had the fantastic opportunity to attend Y-Hack @ Yale, the first hackathon that Coding it Forward has sponsored in person, and we had a blast meeting incredibly talented designers and developers from around the country.
The most exciting thing, however, was the fact that our custom track for Best Social Impact Hack had over 65(!) different teams submit their projects; social impact was by far the most popular, beating out tracks sponsored by the likes of Facebook, Wolfram, and Goldman Sachs. After chatting with each team, we had the difficult job of deciding which project would be named Best Social Impact Hack.
After significant deliberation, we decided to award Best Social Impact Hack to Dennis Collins, Cara Richardson, Anna Butcher, and Patrick Wynn from Johnson & Wales University for their project Scene Sight. Scene Sight is a computer vision-enabled hardware hack that helps keep first responders safe by notifying them early of vehicles that might hit them while they’re on the scene.
“First Responders and emergency personnel put their lives on the line every day when they are working on the side of the road. The Emergency Responder Safety Institute says that, on average, 75–100 emergency personnel (Police, Fire, EMS, and Tow Operators) are killed on the side of the road each year.
Our team saw a problem with this and decided that there was something that we could do, but it would take some interesting technology to do it.” –HackerEarth
We caught up with Dennis to learn more about what inspired the project and share his advice on pursuing social impact for students.
The following has been lightly edited for clarity.
Coding it Forward: Why did you attend YHack?
Dennis Collins: We got into Major League Hackathons about a year ago, and there are sixteen of us [from Johnson & Wales] at YHack. Between my group of friends, we’ve done well at over a dozen hackathons in 2018. I’m about to be a senior, so I’m trying to attend as many as I can before I graduate.
I’ve competed in competitions like FIRST Robotics since I was in high school and I’m kind of a competitive person by nature, so hackathons help feed that a little too.
CIF: It seems like you’re definitely doing well in that area!
DC: I can’t take too much of the credit — we have a phenomenal team and about fifteen other people behind us. We all have varying skill sets, so the stuff that we’re able to come up with as a result is just phenomenal. Being able to bounce ideas off of people that really know what they’re talking about has been great.
CIF: That’s a great segue into my next question. Can you share how you got your team together?
DC: We looked at the group of sixteen from our school that were going, and we tried to put teams of people together that we know can work well together. Some people are better at working on certain things and others can collaborate in general but might not be best on the same team. So we looked at that, and we looked at disciplines and strengths each person had and went from there.
I’m a robotic engineering major, Patrick is a software engineering major, Anna is a cyber threat and intelligence/defense major, and Kara is a cyber management major — more of the business side. We thought we had a really good mix of disciplines between hardware and software with a little business in there as the icing on the cake.
CIF: Was there a lot of personal experience on your team that inspired the project that you built?
DC: Yeah. I come from a family where everyone is in civil service or emergency service. Dad’s a paramedic and a fireman by trade, and we have a lot of friends and family who are police, fire, and EMS. It’s something that I grew up around and it’s very near and dear to my heart.
I’ve heard the stories and know that it’s never good when something happens when they’re on the scene. I’m old enough to remember when New York State and other states started to enact Move Over laws — I remember how happy everyone was when people were finally doing something about the dangers of emergency response work because previously, there were no penalties for drivers who didn’t move over for emergency services.
Having technology now that didn’t exist ten or even five years ago — like the high definition webcams or the processing power of the Qualcomm Dragonboard that we used in our project — allows us to do things like avoid mounting entire control boxes behind trucks to control the unit. So we looked at those technologies and thought, “how can we use this to do something really cool?”
I kind of dreamt up the idea for Scene Sight about a month or two ago. I thought it was a piece that was doable for a hackathon and something that could really show off what our team was capable of. When we got to YHack, we discussed what the plan was — there’s always a plan A, B, C, or D with hackathons, since you don’t always know what you’re getting into — but this idea was plan A and we ended up going for it.
CIF: We’re glad you did honestly!
DC: I am too! It was really cool to build an idea that’s been in my head for so long. To have it sitting in front of me was really something else.
CIF: Are you considering building Scene Sight out into a product?
DC: I am considering building it out. I’m not sure if the entire team is going to continue with me or not; some of us may, some of us may not, but with our group, if anyone wants to continue on with it, they can. That’s one of our ground rules.
I do have some intentions to continue with this in the future, though it may not be right away. I have some loose ends that I need to tie up with school and other projects that I want to finish, but I do intend to get back to this as a pet project.
CIF: What advice do you have for other students that are interested in hacking on things with impact?
DC: Pick something you’re passionate about. If you choose to work on a social good hack or project, usually it’s because you’ve played with the ideas before. For example, I was a Boy Scout and an Eagle Scout, so I’ve been around the whole social good concept for a while. The ability to make a difference in someone’s life is something I enjoy, even if I only play a little, tiny part of it. But everybody likes doing something different, whether it’s directly impacting people or indirectly.
Just find something you’re passionate about and just go with it — see what happens!
Also, find a team that’s willing to support you, that’s the other thing. Sometimes if it’s just you, you hit a roadblock and it’s really hard to get over. Having a team that will support you and your idea along the way is a really powerful thing, even if it’s just one other person. Talking about your idea with other people is useful too. You might think you have a killer idea, but sometimes even just saying it out loud will help you realize that there might be a better way to approach it. So talking about your idea, especially with people that the idea may affect is important.
For example, with Scene Sight, I contacted a friend who owns AAA tow trucks. I called him and asked, “What do you want to see?” and one of the things he said was a back-end with GPS.
He said, “I want to know where my trucks are, and if my truck gets hit on the highway, I want to know about it.” GPS was a feature that we didn’t think of right away since we were so focused on our end goal, so that conversation helped us back up and think about the big picture for a minute.
Talking to someone, especially someone outside of the the tech world or someone inside the realm of what you’re directly doing, like an end user, helps you understand what they want or need from that product. That makes a really big difference.
Just go for it. I don’t think there’s anything that should hold anybody back from creating social impact.
Look out for Coding it Forward at a hackathon near you in 2019! We’ll be sponsoring social impact tracks at TreeHacks and LA Hacks. If you have a social impact idea you’d like to scale, check out our new Mini-Grants program.
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