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Hackathon 2017 Commences… -teams expected to work for 48 hours
Teams at this year’s Hackathon at Work
“Hack to the future” is the theme the Ministry of Telecommunication’s annual Hackathon competition 2017.
The competition which will run for 48 hours, commenced yesterday at 13:00hrs at the Pegasus Hotel is set to come to an end on Sunday at noon, after which there will be the judging segment followed by the announcement of this year’s Hackathon Champion.
The competition had a total of nine teams participating, including a team from neighbouring Suriname for the grand prize of $300 000 GYD. In addition to that, the first prize winner will also be eligible for assistance in bringing their product to the market.
The second and third place finishers will receive $200 000 and $150 000 respectively.
The competition will require team members to have various Information and Communication skills and as such, participants must have knowledge in application development, website development among other things.
According to Public Relations Officer of the Ministry of Public Telecommunications, Marjorie Chester, “ICT is not just ICT; it involves website development, application development, social media, computer science and Graphic designers…at the end of the competition you will realise how many skills there are in ICT and why every skill is important to completing this project”
She also went on to say that the teams were required to have more than one member because “the challenge has various elements that require various skills.”
The competition will see several judges who are as follows: Sandra Zuniga Guzman, Sessie Jones, Gurrendra Persaud, Nacassi Nedd, Led Singh, Kubena Griffith and Lance Hinds who will on Sunday determine the winners of this year’s competition.
Mr Lance Hinds the Ministerial advisor called the event to a start by welcoming the teams to this year’s competition, discussing the assignment and informing the teams of the ‘need to know’ the weekend’s proceeding.
For the previous competition the tasks were distributed by means of picking from a bag of set tasks (lucky dip) but this year they took a different approach by presenting everyone with the same task and allowing them to put their own twist to it.
For the 2017 competition the teams will spend their weekend building an engaging web or mobile application which will encourage property owners to quickly manage the details of their properties and personal information, access demand letters and other notifications that may originate from Mayor and city council (M&CC), manage payments and raise complaints.
Upon completion the developed application is expected to; process payments, show payment history to owners and send out notifications among other things.
Also attending the event was the winner of last year’s Hackathon team V75 (Versizon 75) and a subject specialist, George Nedd, who was tasked with the responsibility of breaking down the challenge to the participants and answering any questions they may have had pertaining to the task at hand.
The competition saw new teams as well as a few returning teams. Among those present were the Innosys, Brink, Intellectstorm, Agard, My Market, Su-Code Squad and Back to front. Some participants expressed their excitement in being a part of the competition for the second year stating that they are even more prepared than last year, while others expressed how nervous they were after seeing the other teams.
The Minister of Telecommunications is set to visit the participants at work on Saturday.
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