NetCaucus Staff

MEDIA ADVISORY
March 28, 2017 

Demo Day on the Hill Honors Congressional App Challenge Winners:
For one day, the House of Representatives becomes the #HouseOfCode

WASHINGTON, D.C.― From 4:30 – 7:30 PM on April 4, 2017, more than 120 Representatives and their 2016 Congressional App Challenge student winners will be honored at #HouseOfCode, a reception and demo day held in the Rayburn Foyer.

In 2016, 123 Members of Congress participated in the second annual Congressional App Challenge (CAC) and inspired over 2,100 students to compete in their coding competitions. Students from 33 states submitted 650 original apps, covering an incredible range of topics and purposes; they created apps to give guidance during medical emergencies, sign-language translators, political news, and more. The apps these students created reflect the creativity, imagination and talent tomorrow’s STEM workforce is capable of, when given opportunity and encouragement. The winning app from each district has been put on display in the Capitol’s Cannon Tunnel, and can also be found on house.gov and the Congressional App Challenge website (CongressionalAppChallenge.us).

The CAC has shown itself to be one of the most bipartisan efforts on the Hill, with Members of all political stripes hosting district-wide competitions to encourage their student constituents to learn how to code. These Members recognize how crucial coding skills are for America’s economic future and hosted the CAC to give their constituents an opportunity to take part in that future. Right now, there are over a half million unfilled computer jobs in the U.S. Even with average salaries of more than $100,000 per year, the number of roles requiring coding skills is growing much faster than the number of students learning them. By participating in the CAC, Members are personally taking steps to address that gap.

#HouseOfCode will honor the efforts of these Members and their winners. Nearly 100 students from across the country will travel to DC to participate and demo their work. Remarks will be given by several Members of Congress and the newly selected 2017 Congressional Co-chairs will be announced. Light refreshments will be served as the students demo their winning apps to their Representatives, congressional staff, and the community. This event is open to the public and the press.

WHAT:     #HouseOfCode – Demo Day and Reception
WHEN:     4:30 – 7:30 PM, Tuesday, April 4
WHERE:  Rayburn Foyer, Rayburn House Office Building 

Welcome Remarks (5:15 PM)

• Rhianon Anderson, Executive Director, Congressional App Challenge
• Rep. Bob Goodlatte (VA-06), Co-Chair of the Internet Caucus, Inaugural CAC Co-Chair
• Rep. Anna G. Eshoo (CA-18), Co-Chair of the Internet Caucus, Inaugural CAC Co-Chair

2016 Recognition & Announcement of 2017 Congressional Co-Chairs (6:00 PM)

• Rep. Ed Royce (CA-39), Co-Chair of the 2016 Congressional App Challenge
• Rep. Seth Moulton (MA-06), Co-Chair of the 2016 Congressional App Challenge

The 2016 CAC was made possible by the generous support of our sponsors: Amazon Web Services, Capital One, Intel, Microsoft, the United Parcel Service, CA Technologies, and the Business Software Alliance.

For more information about #HouseOfCode, please visit: https://houseofcode.splashthat.com/
For more information about the Congressional App Challenge and the student winners, please visit our website.
For questions regarding the program or this event, please contact Rhianon Anderson, at [email protected] or at (650) 302-1799

# # #

About the Congressional App Challenge

The Congressional App Challenge is an initiative that encourages students across the country to learn how to code by participating in district-wide competitions, hosted by Members of Congress.

The program was created in partnership by the Internet Education Foundation and the Congressional Internet Caucus, and officially launched in 2015 with three goals: (1) to inspire students from every corner of the country to explore STEM, coding and computer science through hands-on practice; (2) to actively include and engage students from communities that are traditionally underrepresented in the tech community; and (3) to innovate policymaking by connecting Members of Congress to new and emerging technologies through personal interactions with their student constituents.

In the first 2 years of the program, 239 challenges have been successfully executed across 33 states. More than 1,150 apps were submitted by nearly 4,000 students, and participation demographics surpassed all industry diversity metrics, with young women representing 30% of all competitors.

http://www.congressionalappchallenge.us/

Kevin Collier to moderate Surveillance panel

The Internet Education Foundation is proud to partner with Vocativ, a cutting edge media and technology company, for the Snowden Effect series of events. This media partnership will lead to significant exposure for both the series and the tech policy issues raised by it. In addition, Kevin Collier, Vocativ’s Sr. Privacy and Security reporter, will be moderating our final Snowden Effect event on October 28th covering government surveillance.

The Snowden Effect Series tackles three distinct but inter-related technology policy issues that have been thrust into the spotlight since Edward Snowden’s 2013 revelations. Each event is hosted by one of three IEF projects. The first event on Data Localization, “What Nationality is Your Data?” was hosted by State of the Net. The second, on corporate transparency and subpoena compliance, “The Changing Landscape of Subpoenas, Transparency and Trust” was co-hosted by the Internet Law and Policy Foundry and New America’s Open Technology Institute, while our final event, dealing with government surveillance, “The Future of Surveillance Laws, One Year After USA FREEDOM”, will be hosted by the Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee.

For more about the Snowden Effect series, our upcoming event, and audio and video recordings of our previous two events, check out our special minisite. To sign up for Vocativ’s newsletter, click here http://www.vocativ.com/324278/vocativ-newsletter/.

Stay tuned for an upcoming special look at the work Vocativ has done on these important internet policy issues so far, as well as a Q&A with one of our Snowden Effect distinguished panelists.

PC World wrote an article based on our panel “The Future of Hacking Disclosures: What Are The New Rules of Engagement?” with comments from Heather West and Harley Geiger.

The article called “Phone hacking: What the FBI won’t reveal could hurt users, experts argue” appeared today.

“Government hacking has already happened. The question of whether it should happen is actually way past the point,” – Harley Geiger, director of public policy at Rapid 7, an Internet security company.

“no matter who found the vulnerabilities, we want to tackle the problem.” – Heather West, senior policy manager of the tech nonprofit Mozilla

“At the end of the day, if we can fix this problem, the Internet is safer.” – Heather West, senior policy manager of the tech nonprofit Mozilla

Audio and photos of the event can be found here.

eWeek wrote about our panel on “Data Warrants Across The Pond” noting:

The day the Department of Justice lost its case before the U.S. Circuit Court for the Southern District of New York, in which it was seeking to force Microsoft to turn over email content stored on a server in Ireland, it presented a plan to sidestep those limits with new legislation. … The DOJ revealed its plans at a meeting of the Advisory Committee to the Congressional Internet Caucus.

Read the full article.