Approximately 100 technology enthusiasts will arrive at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock on April 24 to take on the three-day JOLT Cyber Challenge presented by the Venture Center.
This year’s challenge surrounds AI and continues last year’s story, focusing on an imaginary company that is scaling its AI system rapidly. For three days, the groups of four competitors each will take on complex challenges, testing a wide range of skills to help save the imaginary company.
The people who create these challenges are a talented group who bring their own skills and technology knowledge to the games. They are known at JOLT as the game makers.
One of this year’s game makers, Jeff Bailey, is the director of IT and information security at Apptegy, an education software company in Little Rock. Before becoming a game maker, he participated in JOLT himself.
“My first JOLT, I came in kind of nervous because my job was more on the administrative management side,” Bailey said.
He said he found out he could do more of the challenges than he first thought, especially because the JOLT competition “creates a ramp on,” Bailey said.
“So no matter what your skill level is, you’re going to come in, and you’re going to grow,” he said.
Game maker Zach Callahan had a similar story. He has been in the tech space for about five years and is in his second year as a “GM.” Two years before that, he was a competitor at JOLT.
“My first JOLT really opened my eyes to ‘I do know how to do a lot of this stuff,’ and I think we provide that to students, too,” he said. “[I learned] I am capable of these things, and hopefully other people will get the same thing.”
A third volunteer, Daniel Spillers, has been with JOLT since the beginning, he said. He is now the emcee of the weekend, and manages the music playlist — a job he takes very seriously.
“I was just there as a volunteer, and it morphed into just something that I can’t quit,” he said. “The thing that keeps me coming back is that from the get-go, we have had an educational goal.”
While the weekend is full of long days and lots of work for the people in the competition, it is just as difficult for the game makers, who are there throughout the whole event. They often help the competitors and sometimes even have to fix things within a challenge at a moment’s notice.
JOLT combines capture-the-flag-style gameplay with real-world training in areas such as web and application vulnerabilities, reverse engineering, system security, incident response and more.
“The competition itself is as grueling for the GMs as it is for the players,” Spillers said. “Everyone is exhausted.”
These game makers said every year, they start thinking about the next JOLT right after the current one. As the event gets closer, they meet more often to plan the theme and create their games.
“They take a lot of time out of their lives across the year to make this happen,” Spillers said.
He said while the game makers work to make the challenges fun, they also want to stretch people to become better.
“If somebody goes away from the weekend with a new skill set, a new tool, new exposure to a concept, if they leave with one thing, then to me the ultimate goal of the weekend has been met.”
JOLT is open to high school students, college students and professionals, who will compete in teams of four. They also have chances over the weekend to connect with mentors and industry leaders.
Teams can still register for JOLT at venturecenter.co/JOLT.
