One cannot let March pass by without a short flashback towards the event of the Month, MinditHacks, the first 24h hackathon in Mindit.io this year. We had 6 teams of energetic and enthusiastic people willing to prove their great ideas work. Each saw the theme of „Making our online lives easier” in a different way and this led to great MVPs (minimum viable products).
The early Saturday start was full of delicious surprises that kept on going for the whole event since the fairies from the business support functions ensured healthy and good-looking goodies are there to support the intensive work done by the participants.
After a short idea pitch every team got to their spot and started at full speed which lasted until the very morning of next day. There were very few those who could not last until the very end of the event and we are proud of each minute people managed to stay focused for the idea they believed in. “ I felt like on a summer camp” said one of the participants.
As far as what the hackathon brought to life, we had some spectacular surprises. A team of very determined engineers still in their first professional years took the challenge to make machine learning work in retail and to support managers make data driven decisions. They managed to create a system to predict sales based on previous behavior – they still have to put on some work to improve it, but the success is not far away.
Because a hackathon can really bring people together, we also had some less technical participants with great ideas worth investing a 24h intensive work to bring them a step forward towards implementation, with great business cases and impact. However, they were compliant to the theme and in this way we have an online Mindit.io Social Responsibility project created with a dear online tool to our colleagues, Confluence, and a B2B travel agency company with complete strategy, website and Operational flow.
At this session Mindit.io opened its gates to the young team of candidates to our summer internship and they managed to bring to life a very useful device for the blind to get notified when they approach an obstacle. Great job, youngsters and welcome abord! We also had with us some dear guests and we are very happy that, even if they chose a different path, they could invest a Saturday to have fun together again.
The winning ideas, because the jury had difficulty in deciding which idea was the best, better implemented and with a better business case, were related to machine learning in online retail. SophistiTech, who also got the votes of the public, created the system that mass retailers will just love to have in their changing cabins or on their e-shop platforms. They can identify a person’s style based on what they are wearing and suggest products based on that. The testing of this product was the preferred activity of the event. Mindshopper team created a practical buying chatbot and the people participating to the event could see how their shopping experience will be improved in the near future.
“It is visible that we learned a lot from the previous hackathons in Mindit.io and I was pleasantly surprised by the courage shown by the project ideas and technologies used, as well as the outstanding organization. I am proud of the results of the teams’ work and I am looking forward to the next edition of MinditsHack” is the message with which our CTO finished the event.
Everybody enjoyed the event as you can see from the testimonials of the participants:
“Great experience to create something from scratch, an idea which is not work related and to have endless possibilities to model it, not based on some business requirements… but based on our creativity! Also, the activity was perfect to build friendships and enforce the relationships between us.”
“It was challenging and fun in the same time, I’ve learned new stuff and the teamwork was at its best. Overall an awesome experience”
“Saturday was super cool, my first 24h hackathon. Very good organizing, a lot of people with good energy and cool vibe, and of course, competition spirit. I am very happy to have participated and I actually learned a lot both about the tools used and business understanding of retail industry. I can hardly wait the next hack”
„A cozy yet competitive atmosphere. Not only could you see teamwok among the project members, but you could also feel it whenever we were helping each other out cross teams. We even surprised ourselves with what we managed to complete in such a short period of time”
Therefore it was fun, it was competitive, it was Mindit.io. Stay tuned for the great events to come.
