Stockport based CDL sponsor Manchester College Hackathon

Stockport based CDL, one of the UK’s leading insurance software houses, sponsored the first ever Manchester College Hackathon – aimed at inspiring more young people to pursue careers in computing and technology.

IT students from colleges across the North-West pitted their programming skills against each other in a bid to be crowned champions of the first ever Manchester College Hackathon.

Students from colleges including Manchester, Blackpool and Leeds, attended the two-day competition hosted at Loreto College, where they took part in a series of coding challenges set by sponsoring organisations.

Headline sponsors, technology firm CDL, set the task of recreating the classic 1970s computer game Asteroids in a chosen theme and designing a website to promote the new game.

CDL HR business partner Tom McConnell with the winners of the first Great Manchester College Hackathon, Team Undecided, from Altrincham Grammar School for Boys

The overall winners of the competition, from Altrincham Grammar School for Boys, created a version themed around other retro games, Super Mario and Donkey Kong. They took home a prize of an Amazon Chrome Cast and a Raspberry Pi computer.

Frank Robinson, director of HR at CDL, commented:

“The first Manchester College Hackathon was a tremendous success. Supporting events like this is important to CDL because it’s essential that we encourage young people to acquire the coding and programming skills that will be in increasingly high demand.

“We were encouraged by the interest from all over the country and the very high standard of teams competing. The team from Altrinham Grammar School for Boys followed the brief, showed a lot of creativity and demonstrated excellent knowledge of the technology they were using. Congratulations to them on winning!”

CDL is one of the UK’s leading insurance software houses, employing over 650 people at its campus in Greater Manchester. It has a strong track record in the high volume retail insurance sector, with clients including Ageas Retail, iGO4, Swinton Insurance and Tesco Bank.

CDL has spearheaded developments in the aggregator, web and telematics space, including connected home, enrichment and self-service solutions. As a result, the company’s robust and innovative technologies have enabled its customers to thrive in the highly competitive UK insurance marketplace.