Hackathon is a forum for programmers, during which specialists from different areas of software development jointly solve customer problems. This communication tool for small and large businesses can undoubtedly be called the engine of innovative technologies and fresh digital solutions to the masses. It is important that the customer, starting from the problems of his business, himself defines the task for the hackathon, and the participants in advance build a strategy for solving the problem in the most productive way. To understand what privileges hackathon participants get, we suggest that you familiarize yourself with the success story of the winning team of the Megapolis Moscow track as part of one of the country's largest online hackathons, VirusHack.
VirusHack took place in May of this year. 78 teams from 64 cities of Russia took part in the Megapolis Moscow track, organized by the Moscow Innovation Agency. Among the customers of the track were such business sharks as ICQ New (Mail.ru Group), X5 Retail Group, SberCloud, Uma.Tech (Gazprom-Media) and Mobile Medical Technologies. Out of 50 developed solutions, 15 were selected by customers for further development. At the end of the event, part of the specialists received invitations from the track partners for employment. Each of the teams working on a particular order demonstrated high professional competence, experience and knowledge. But, as they say, the strongest won.
One of the participants in the hackathon were representatives of TalkMart42, who had previously worked on a virtual voice assistant project. Speaking at an event with a team called Buckwheat42, the guys coped better than others with the task of X5 Retail Group to develop an additional voice input function for contactless purchases in Pyaterochka supermarkets.
The project was developed in Python. The prototype is based on open-source speech-to-text technologies and a module for processing and analyzing the received text (Natural Language Understanding). Kaldi was chosen from the available libraries for converting voice to text, as it works quickly and gives a relatively high quality of recognition not only of Russian, but also of a number of other languages.
For ease of deployment and testing, the prototype was built using Docker technology. For each operation, this module revealed the user's intentions (intents), extracted the spoken product names, as well as barcodes, loyalty card numbers, coupons and other related information. The function worked without access to the Internet or external voice conversion services.
Sergey Chernov, CEO, talks about the benefits of participating in the VirusHack hackathon for TalkMart42.
“We were interested in the topic of voice assistants for e-grocery before, but we looked primarily towards online scripts. Thanks to the hackathon, we dived into the specifics of offline sales: we learned about the problems of filtering noise in salesrooms, splitting customer voices, voice recognition without Internet access in conditions of modest computing resources, as well as integrating voice control into the current user journey. This gave ideas for new scenarios for using voice assistants in retail, ”he said.
TalkMart42 employees gained invaluable experience in development in extreme conditions and, as a result, began to cooperate with one of the largest retailers in the country. At the moment, the guys together with X5 Retail Group are discussing the details of launching a pilot project.
According to Sergei Chernov, having won the hackathon, TalkMart42 received opportunities and funds to bring new digital products to the Russian market and attract customers to them.
“Last month, the boom of voice assistants for online grocery ordering continued. The largest Indian retailer Flipkart, with a capitalization of more than $ 20 billion, has launched a voice assistant, allowing its customers to order delivery in English, Hindi and two other local languages. European retailer Carrefour has launched voice ordering via app in France, he explained. “There are no such cases in Russian retail yet, and this is a great opportunity to get ahead of the competition.”
TalkMart42, according to its CEO, is now piloting a voice assistant in Russian to receive online orders through the mobile applications of the largest retail players, as well as using skills for smart speakers. Another area of TalkMart42's activity is to help offline retailers with voice control of self-service checkouts and information kiosks.
Sergey Chernov recommends his colleagues to participate in hackathons. In his opinion, such events can be a useful tool for business development if the task has a specific customer who is ready to implement the winning team's solution into his business.
As the head of TalkMart42 notes, the obvious advantages of hackathons are that they provide an objective assessment (a beautiful presentation design and an abundance of development plans for a real customer are less attractive than well-written and working code and realistic plans for integrating a solution), motivate to participate with full dedication and allow you to understand in general what problems the business is facing.
“By using a simple dropout criterion like 'a clear business customer with a clear business problem', loosely organized events with an unclear business purpose can be avoided. Ideal result: turn your participation in the hackathon into a useful business case with measurable value for the customer, ”he concluded.
From the words of Sergei Chernov, it becomes clear that hackathons are a start in life, new financial contracts and serious development prospects for aspiring entrepreneurs; improvement of work and search for new personnel for large business and, ultimately, improvement of the quality of service to you and me - clients.
It should be noted that one of the key organizers of hackathons in Moscow is the Moscow Innovation Agency. Thanks to such events of the Agency, many specialists have established communication and interaction not only with the large business community, but also with city customers.
“Behind us are such successful cases as the Urban.Tech Moscow offline hackathon last year, the Megapolis Moscow track as part of the VirusHack online hackathon in the context of a pandemic in May, and others. And ahead - the autumn online hackathon "Leaders of Digital Transformation", aimed at solving urgent problems of urban structures, with solid cash prizes for the winners and a program of "recruiting" the best solutions before piloting in urban infrastructure ", - said Deputy Director General of the Moscow Agency for Innovations Maria Bogomolov.
The collection of applications for participation in the new hackathon will begin in August this year. Detailed information about it will appear in the near future on the website of the Moscow Innovation Agency.