Qiskit fall fest Mexico with PIQUE
Introduction
An online Hackathon on quantum computing was held by the Qiskit fall-fest Mexico, with the particularity of being an event aimed at Spanish speakers in their native language. It was done with the collaboration of different organisations, such as Xanadu and Multiverse, whose members shared workshops with us, and non-profit organisations such as quantum universal Education, who supported us with their space and resources to offer the challenge to the best educational project.
This online hackathon on Quantum computing on October 17-28, 2021.
Summary
This event is based in Spanish and was disseminated in the different social networks of quantum computing and communities such as QuantumHispano and QMexico, likewise, in communities such as qiskit excisten Spanish-speaking people who communicate in English, it was possible to connect with 220 people from 15 different countries, such as Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Chile, Spain, Argentina, Honduras, among others.
This project was oriented to multiple countries, one of the participants is of Mexican origin and lives in Australia, this event managed to break barriers by attracting Spanish-speaking people, and it obtained interest from students of different educational levels, most of them being undergraduates and postgraduates,
66% of attendees idnetified as no knowledge or begginer of quantum computing
There was a week of workshops for those people who had no knowledge of quantum computing supported by amazing qiskit advocates and industry workers such as those from the companies xanadu and multiverse computing. Of these approximately 160 people were interested in the workshops and in participating in the hackathon where they would have 4 days to generate a project on quantum computing.
These workshops were mostly given in Spanish on topics such as introduction to quantum computing, quantum cryptography, oracles, optimisation, quantum chemistry, quantum machine learning, how to start in the industry?, and others. These can be seen in this playlist
For the competition to be part of the Qiskit fall fest you can find it on the hype platform and you can see it here . out of the 160 participants 29 people created 10 teams and generated different proposals. For the hackathon, two categories were entered, the IBM criteria for the best project using Qiskit and the best educational project by Quantum Universal Education, and every day meetings were held to resolve questions using discord.
We share with you the official images of the winners and the prize-giving ceremony of the best project using qiskit, both from the Mexico headquarters and from the educational part, handing out a Quantum Universl Education t-shirt.
The swag for the third place
The swag for the best education project
Link of the IPN magazine where they mention our event as organizers here.
The host institute conducted an interview with the local participants who came in third place, the post can be found here.
Results
We got a lot of feedback from our participants from different countries Mexico, Colombia, Chile, Venezuela and Peru, the most remarkable ones are:
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They were days of much learning in the quantum computing workshops, great organisation of the event, I am very happy that I decided to propose my own initiative in the Hackathon, I want to live the experience and what better than in my language (Spanish) it really is a plus that motivates me even more to continue learning. thank you very much!; “Fueron días de mucho aprendizaje en los talleres de computación cuántica, gran organización del evento, estoy muy contenta que decidí proponer mi propia iniciativa en el Hackathon, quiero vivir la experiencia y qué mejor que en mi idioma (Español) en verdad es un plus que me motiva aún más para continuar aprendiendo. ¡Muchas gracias!”
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I loved that these workshops were given in Spanish, it facilitates the dissemination of quantum computing in Latin America; “Me encantó que se dieran estos talleres en español, facilita la difusión de la computación cuántica en américa latina”
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Very good project, it is a breakthrough for quantum computing in the country; “Muy buen proyecto, es un avance para la computación cuántica en el país.”
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Just, thanks to the organizers, the order in which everything was done is appreciated, and their effort is noticeable! Nada más. Gracias a los organizadores se aprecia el orden qué se tuvo con todo y se nota su esfuerzo!
The hackathon was part of an international congress and was at the heart of this being a reference in the magazine of the month of December of the institute about this event, in the same way an interview was made by a national television channel to talk about the event. The winners of the magazine are expected to be interviewed in the future. This is a great project and one that was of great interest to the Latin Americans and the institutions that participated in it.
Finally, we asked our participants the following question, “Would you like to see more events like this in Spanish?” and the result was 100% agree to follow these events in their native language, we hope to continue projects and events in the near future.