Imagine Cup: How did Haters Hater win an Honorable Mention in the World Citizenship category?

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Imagine Cup 2015 has been announced. If you are a Canadian Student and not participating in the Global Student Technology Competition, you are missing out! In this blog post, I will discuss specific details about the World Citizenship Category

In my last post, I gave specific details about the World Citizenship Category for Imagine Cup 2015. I also touched upon how and what you should think about if you want to participate in this category. Just to reiterate the theme, you address a social issue using Microsoft technologies and platform. Today, I will feature one such team who address a very crucial social issue that needs attention from the masses.

As you may be aware (and if you are not, no worries!) , Imagine Cup started with the Pitch Video Challenge. In this Challenge, students from all over the world were encouraged to make a pitch of their idea in a 3 minute video and submit it. The winning team was entitled to win $3000. The winners of the Imagine Cup: Pitch Video Challenge 2015 was announced sometime back. I am proud to let you know, that our very own team from Canada, Haters Hater, won an Honorable mention in World Citizenship Category. See the video below to see their pitch and understand what social issue they addressed.

Here are some more details about the team in their own words:

What social issue did Haters Hater address?

In the this day and age where online social networks dominate personal interactions, conversations are becoming more and more anonymous. However as more school-aged kids start engaging with their peers online, cyber-bullying is becoming a huge problem that educators and parents are unable to deal with. There is a real cost to this inability - 90% of all 4th to 8th graders report being bullied; 15% of students who are absent from school cite fear of bullying as the cause. We want to give teachers, counselors and parents the ability to intervene and prevent.

Using modern data analysis techniques such as natural language processing and machine learning, we will build an early detection tool for cyber-bullying at schools. This tool will be available for free, and will be hosted on Microsoft Azure, taking advantage of Azure's immense computing capabilities and scalability. We hope this will allow the next generation of youth to grow up confident and fearless.
We are a team of passionate software engineers and data scientists from the University of Waterloo in Canada (who were also bullied as kids). This is our entry into the Microsoft Imagine Cu

What key technologies did they use?

  • Natural Language Processing on Python, using NLTK, Scikit-Learn, Pandas, iPython
  • API Infrastructure on Node.JS, using Express, Backbone and MongoDB
  • Hosted on Microsoft Azure

Who are the Haters Hater?

  • Andee Liao - 4th year Computing and Financial Management, University of Waterloo
  • Bryan Hatton - 4th year Business Administration and Computer Science Double Degree @ Wilfrid Laurier University & University of Waterloo
  • Jack Gao - 4th year Business Administration and Computer Science and Business Double Degree @ Wilfrid Laurier University & University of Waterloo

(Quick note: Bryan and Jack have a weird program. They take computer science at UW and business at WLU)

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We wish Team Haters Hater all the very best for Imagine Cup 2015. If Haters Hate can do it, so can you! We encourage more participation from all schools across Canada.

As you can see, the social issue that Haters Hater addressed was personal to them, something that they observed and something that they wanted to take a stand against. I encourage you all to do the same. Keep your eyes and ears open or refer to resources mentioned in my previous article for an idea. Build a solution in the fields of social, health, environmental or education and submit it for Imagine Cup 2015 World Citizenship Category.

As always, I would like to thank our esteemed sponsors, TakingItGlobal for sponsoring the World Citizenship Category for Imagine Cup Canada 2015.

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Hurry! Time is running out. You can find all details such as important dates, registration and rules at www.imaginecup.ca. Please reach out to ImagineCupCanada@microsoft.com or me @AdarshaDatta if you have any questions. Looking forward to all your submissions and hoping for a healthy representation in the World Finals of Imagine Cup 2015.

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