Announcing the “Visualize for the Prize” Hackathon for Students
Data is much more powerful when it’s easy to understand and presented in an engaging way. That’s why—starting today and ending in two weeks on July 28, 2021—students around the globe can compete for some incredible prizes by bringing API data to life during Postman’s “Visualize for the Prize” hackathon.
The hackathon challenge: Use Postman Visualizer to make sense of data returned from an API in a manner that adds value and understanding. A pie chart of a Github user’s most used programming languages? A map showing the location of the International Space Station at this very moment? Get creative and have fun with it.
This hackathon is an exciting lead-up to the first-ever Postman Student Summit, an online global API conference for students and educators happening August 7-8, 2021. Join us as we celebrate all things API with insightful and inspiring talks from students, educators, and the Postman team. Among many other activities, we’ll be announcing winners of the “Visualize for the Prize” hackathon at the Student Summit. You can register to attend the event for free here.
What is Postman Visualizer?
Postman Visualizer allows you to programmatically visualize response data from an API using JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. You can view visualizations in Postman by clicking on the Visualize tab in responses. Getting started is simple—check out this three-minute Postman Visualizer demo video to learn more:
Example visualizations
Explore this Postman public workspace for examples of what you can make with Postman Visualizer. Simply fork a collection, then check the Visualize tab of the response after sending a request. Here are examples of just some of the ways you can breathe life into data with Postman Visualizer:
Hackathon FAQ
Who is eligible?
The “Visualize for the Prize” hackathon is open to students in high school, college/university, or boot camps. Note: Unfortunately, due to international competition prize laws, students residing in the following regions will not be eligible to receive prizes with cash value: Brazil, Quebec, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, and Crimea. Students in these regions are still welcome to submit a project to compete for the one-on-one career chat with a Postman employee and recognition in the Postman blog.
How do I participate?
First, register on our hackathon’s Devpost page. To enter a submission, you will need to provide a link to your Postman Collection containing your visualization (make sure it is in a public workspace), and a short video (less than two minutes long) demonstrating your visualization. The submission deadline is July 28, 2021, at 11:00 a.m. (PDT).
Where can I get data to create visualizations?
There are many free APIs that allow you to fetch data. See a sample list of public APIs here. Have some data that isn’t served from an API yet? Create a mock server in Postman to serve your data. You can even make a GET request to a raw dataset hosted on the internet, such as on GitHub (like this huge list of JSON datasets, or upload your own). Kaggle is another source of datasets; you may need to convert CSV files to JSON. Maybe your university or government has some interesting data to expose?
What are the prizes?
The hackathon will have two awards: a Champion award, selected by the Postman team; and a People’s Choice award, selected by student peers.
The winner of the Champion award will receive:
-
- Raspberry Pi 4 Kit
- 45-minute one-on-one career mentoring session with a Postman employee in the field of their interest
- US$100 gift card to the Postman swag store
- Mention of their winning project in the Postman blog
The winner of the People’s Choice award will receive:
-
- US$100 gift card to the Postman swag store
- Mention of their winning project in the Postman blog
How will the winners be announced?
Winners will first be announced at the Postman Student Summit on August 8, 2021. Be sure to register for the summit here to catch the big reveal, alongside other talks from students, educators, and the Postman team.
You can find more details and register for the hackathon here. Good luck, and we look forward to seeing what you create!
What do you think about this topic? Tell us in a comment below.