Highlights from the Data Monster Hackathon 2016
At Indix, we love our hackathons. It’s an excellent way of engaging with the developer community. We hosted our Data Monster hackathon on 20 and 21 August at the Chennai office. A total of 32 hackers from various companies participated in this 24 hour hackathon.
The hackathon began with an interesting ice breaker game at 10 a.m. The participants were split into four different groups of eight each and we had two Indix volunteers per each team. Each team huddled, did a quick round of team introductions and then formed a circle with a “twist.” From the messy and jumbled formation, they had to then untangle themselves and form a proper circle as well. It was super fun with each team devising well-calculated moves that would help them untangle the knots. It was a fun icebreaker that helped people be active, move around, and loosen up.
At the kick-off, our Co-Founder and Director of Engineering Rajesh Muppalla spoke about the history of the Indix journey and shared key engineering challenges that we are trying to solve everyday towards achieving our mission of building the world’s first Product Information Marketplace. This was followed by an interactive question and answer session where the participants had a bunch of questions answered by Rajesh and the team.
After that session, we went over the two-day agenda of the hackathon and then introduced participants to the challenges. In total, there were three questions and the participants (maximum two per team or individuals) had a choice of picking any one and start hacking away!
A bunch of volunteers and coaches from Indix helped out the teams with answering any questions that came up, and also providing the necessary technical assistance needed for the teams to get started solving the problems. The coaches were at their sprinting best hopping from table to table to ensure that the hackers received the best possible clarifications for their doubts.
By evening on day one, around 6 p.m., the coaches and judges reviewed the progress of the participants and provided feedback where needed. The hackers didn’t lose their enthusiasm for a single minute and were completely immersed in the problem. They delivered their very best. Everyone burned the midnight oil, worked tirelessly, and yet thoroughly relished every moment.
The pantry was stocked with food and snacks that were available around the clock. As the sun rose and the second day dawned, participants were still hacking in high spirits. At 10.30 a.m. on day two, the judges took a detailed review of the progress of the teams and took stock of the situation. The deadline for the final submission was at 12 p.m. and the teams were racing against time to provide finishing touches to their final solution.
The demos kicked off around noon and all the teams presented their solutions. There was a volley of questions thrown at each of the presentations by both the Indix judges and fellow hackers, which made the demo session thoroughly enjoyable and informative.
The judges had a very tough time picking winners and runners-up as everyone had come up with solid solutions to the problem presented to them. However, after much examination, some solutions outdid others and we picked the top two teams.
The runner-up team comprised Prasad Krishnan from Applied Data Finance and Sathish from Paypal. The runners-up were presented Amazon Kindles.
Congratulations to the runner-up team!
The winning team was Balachandar and Anandakumar from Zoho. They were presented with One plus Three phones.
Congratulations to the winning team!
At the end of the hackathon, team Indix also demoed the systems that we are working on currently which were close to the problem statement provided.
Each hackathon participant received a Indix goodies bag, and they also provided valuable feedback to the organizing team by filling out a survey. Check it out.
Positive feedback is always delightful and encouraging. We are looking forward to organizing many more hackathons in the future.
Check out more tweets here.
Originally published at Indix.
