National Hackathon 2014 promises to deliver socially responsible apps
As many as 1,745 young mobile application developers got together at the National Mobile Hackathon 2014 to find solution to 10 social and national problems. Organised by the Information and Communications Technology Division, the coding fiesta, the biggest of its kind in the country, addressed 10 specific local problems.‘We only see problems in the social communications media,’ State Minister for ICT Division, Zunaid Ahmed Palak told the inaugural ceremony.
‘One blames the other. We keep talking about various issues like traffic congestion, question paper leakage, corruption. But what is the solution? Will we only identify the problems or will we provide solutions, too? The young generation will find the solutions to the various problems of city life in the hackathon,’ he said.
The Hackathon was organised under the ICT Division’s National Mobile Application Development Awareness and Capacity Building Programme. MCC Ltd, A2I BASIS, Symphony, Grameenphone, Robi, Sol Quest, Google Developer Group, Better Stories Ltd, BD Ventures Ltd, HiFi Public, Social Geeky Advantage were also partners at the event.
The 10 problems that were selected for addressing were – question paper leakage, corruption, sexual harassment, traffic jam, security on the highways, sanitation, water transport safety, cyclone centre management, reproductive health and personal health. Using technology, more specifically mobile technology, the developers tried to build solutions to these problems.
The participants – who include programmers, freelancers, students and mobile application developers – were divided into 340 teams with each comprising five members inclusive of both coders and designers. Forty nine professional companies also took part in the competition.
Thirty veteran IT specialists and programmers evaluated the projects. The winner was awarded with Tk. 20 lakh of innovation fund to materialise their project. BD Ventures Ltd would also provide them with financial support.
The winners also received several prizes from Microsoft Mobile, Symphony, Robi and Grameenphone. Better Stories Ltd will help them market their product for a year. The Hackathon started with a workshop on Vision 2021, which was conducted by the state minister. This was followed by a session on design sprint and paper prototype, and then the primary coding. Different technical sessions were held as well.
QUBEE provided WiFi support at the event held at Institute of Diploma Engineers, Bangladesh, and it was the largest WiFi support for any event in Bangladesh till date. This was a massive undertaking on the part of QUBEE as each auditorium hosted over 400 people who were all simultaneously connected on their devices using the QUBEE WiFi. The event was a thrilling leap to solve local issues and bringing public services to the people’s hand by innovative solutions through young tech professionals.
The Hackathon Know-how
Hackathons are globally recognised as a marathon coding event. It is a gathering where programmers collaboratively code in an extreme manner over a short period of time. Developers, innovators and designers join Hackathon in a team of 5 people generally to build innovative prototype to solve some given problem sets. Hackathon is an ultimate exhibition of skills for developers. Any Mobile App Developer, User Interface Designer and Web Service experts tale part in the event where students, professionals, freelancers are the main participants.
