On Saturday, May 12, two IT experts from Minnesota IT Services volunteered to judge Technovation[MN]’s Appapalooza event. Technovation[MN]’s Appapalooza challenges Minnesota teen girls to team up, design, code, and pitch mobile phone apps with the potential to make a difference in the community.

Appapalooza’s goal is to encourage young women to solve real-world problems with technology. To prepare for the event, the teams researched a topic and then worked with a coach or mentor to develop an application to solve a problem. The teams then created a proposal to submit to Technovation[MN], which included a pitch video, demo video, and their fully coded application.

The competition was held at the Minneapolis Convention Center, and it brought together 340 girls in 78 teams from 39 schools across the state. Along with 80 other judges, MNIT’s information security analyst Nancy Skuta judged teams in the junior division (girls from grades 4-8), and senior data governance planner Ellena Schoop judged teams in the senior division (girls from grades 9-12).

At Appapalooza, the student groups presented their apps to the judges in a room full of their peers, parents, and guests. The judges, having evaluated the teams’ apps before the event, had one last opportunity to adjust their scores based on each group’s presentation and the following Q+A session.

“Keep in mind some of these students are as young as 10 and they are getting up in front of as many as 75 people to give a presentation. Pretty impressive,” said Nancy Skuta.

Out of 57 junior teams, six were selected as regional winners. Out of 21 senior teams, three were selected. Nancy was lucky enough to have two winning junior teams in the batch of five that she got to evaluate as a competition judge.

One group, Cryptic Coders from Falcon Ridge Middle School, was selected as a junior division regional winner and awarded the US Bank Cybersecurity Challenge award. Their app is designed to be a “Cyber protection app that oversees a teen’s entire cyber profile through prevention, authentication and notifications.”

In addition to working as a judge, Ellena Schoop served as a team mentor. A team she is currently working with, due to their integration of state data, Computer Glitz, is from Eagan High School & Dakota Hills Middle School. Their app, Hands On, won in the senior division for their application (Ellena did not evaluate their app during the competition).

Check out a complete list of the Appapalooza winners

“The event was very well run and a lot of fun. It is SO inspiring to see what these students come up with. They are tackling some pretty tough issues, ranging from domestic violence to air pollution – and the practical approaches of helping students navigate through trade school and college applications, grants, loans, etc. The future is bright!” said Nancy Skuta.

“We were not allowed to judge based on the quality of the video and demo, but rather the content,” Ellena Schoop added. “This to me was important, because some from rural MN and/or even worldwide don’t have the same access to resources as others. It was a truly an incredible and inspiring event. These high school kids are right on our heels!”

The Appapalooza event on May 12 was part of an international app-building competition. The winners from this event advanced to the semi-finals for a shot at competing in the global competition in San Francisco.