Our task was to hold 6 events in six months in conjunction with major partners: IT company InnoSTage, business accelerator Digital SuperHero and KasperskyiHub, and also to involve the FinTech Association in the examination of projects. Previously, we planned offline events, but due to the pandemic, we had to go online. The first May hackathon went off with a bang. We spent the second in August this year.
If at the very beginning we had seen an article on how to conduct an online hackathon, everything would have been much easier. Spoiler - read to the end, in conclusion, we publish the checklist of the online hackathon from the business accelerator DigitalSuperHero, which is the operator of the entire series of the all-Russian marathon of online hackathons Digital Superhero (part of the InnoSTage Group)
How online hackathon differs from offline
At the beginning of the journey, the main task was to reorganize the work schedule of rooms, streams, coordination of consultants - who and at what time should be connected. Then it became obvious to us that we faced the same problems on the offline site. There is almost no difference in approach, but the online format provides much more opportunities than difficulties.
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More than 200 people - 69 teams - took part in the hackathon. These are guys from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kazan, Novosibirsk, Samara, Yekaterinburg, Perm, Nizhny Novgorod, Ufa, Voronezh, Tomsk, Chelyabinsk, Syktyvkar, Simferopol, Kemerovo, Blagoveshchensk, Kusk, Ulan-Ude, as well as programmers from Belarus and Kazakhstan.
It turned out to be not so easy to recruit so many participants. Despite the prize fund of 700 thousand rubles, word of mouth was not done. We had to include ads. Social media targeting has become the most effective tool that overwhelms others. Most of the applications came from there, especially from Instagram.
The hackathon lasted for a week and it was really exciting. The online format allowed teams to work in conditions convenient for them, at any time of the day. We used the Codenrock site. All technical consultants, business consultants from the bank and organizers, as well as the participants of the hackathon were represented there. The platform allowed experts to look in advance on the participant card, all team members, their competencies and presentations. For Data Scientist, we used the built-in platform mechanism that checked the results of the projects. Points were automatically put down for the technical part, for the speed of work, for the accuracy of forecasting, etc.
We used Telegram for communication and consultation. There were rooms in ZOOM, through which the participants could call, ask questions, see the faces of each other and our specialists.
Machine learning for fintech tasks
In the direction of fintech, the first prize was taken by the St. Petersburg team "First Time" with a solution to predict the default of a client's solvency by various parameters of his financial operations. In developing the case, the team used real anonymized data.
The solution was built on the basis of machine learning - one of the most demanded technologies for working with large amounts of data today.
The assignment was related to machine learning. Based on a set of parameters, it was necessary to predict whether a person would be able to pay on a loan and, according to the data provided, to assume the average salary, - explains the captain of the First Time team Anton Changalidi, - as a result, our solution predicts the target variable according to the binary classification (will / will not work) and by the rate of regressionAs Anton explained, the most difficult thing is to prepare a data-set from the raw data. For example, fill in gaps, data gaps. Find where to get the missing parameters to fill in the gaps and still achieve maximum accuracy.
The guys have developed a web interface for their program - a site that calculates and predicts the necessary probabilities. For example, the likelihood of a loan delay.
The program included the possibility of additional training of the model in one click with the ability to download the accumulated actual data on clients, which after loading the program will take into account when forecasting, thus increasing the accuracy.
At the same time, Ak Bars Digital Technologies provided data from real customers of the bank, which allowed the project to work not on an abstract task, but to solve real problems.
You can watch the presentation of the team and its members here .
Cybersecurity and biometrics
In the area of cybersecurity, the leader was the solution to recognize the user at his workplace, proposed by the Black Swan team from Kazan. The guys were faced with the task of creating an agent application for Windows that would be able to recognize a user at a workplace by biometric data.
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The programmers used in their work the service of client recognition by biometric data - Face2, already implemented in Ak Bars Bank.
The Face2 service has already been implemented at several sites in Tatarstan, hundreds of people use it every day, ”says Damir Galiev, Innovation Director of Ak Bars Bank. - With the help of Face2, it is possible to pay for an order in canteens and cafes, just by looking at the camera, a biometric access control system lets employees through in private offices and municipal buildings. It is a whole ecosystem consisting of a payment system, a loyalty program, and an access control system based on face recognition. That is, the guys had a real opportunity to solve an applied problem, to increase the functionality of a ready-made solution. I'm glad they did itYou can watch the team presentation by following the link .
Solutions will find application in life
. , . , , – . – «» «GlutenFree» . «while True: print(«Hello World»)»,In the Cybersecurity nomination, the second and third places went to the St. Petersburg and Moscow teams. MozhaykaTeam came second in the challenge of extracting personal data from web pages. The third place went to the Net Diggers team with real-time DNS traffic analysis.
Developers from St. Petersburg became the most active participants in this stage of the competition, taking three nominations out of six possible.
As a result, we got the maximum return and positive emotions from the online format. The hackathon was a great experience for us and all the participants.
Check from online hackathon marathon operator Digital Superhero
1. Online platform - the basis for the online format. It is very important that it is functionally flexible and adaptable to your goals and objectives.
2. An operator who understands the mechanics of the project and coordinates all organizational processes. In our case, we ourselves acted as operators. We had no room for error, we were gaining experience in real time.
3. The budget . In the beginning, it might seem like an offline hackathon will save a lot of your budget. But practice has shown the opposite. A worthy event requires a worthy investment.
4. Targeting... Knowledge and ability to use targeted advertising chips are essential to attract the right target audience. In a pandemic, we were faced with the fact that all universities, technoparks, business incubators were closed and we had to look for participants only in the virtual space.
5. Messengers . To moderate everything that happens in the online space, we needed many different Telegram chats and ZOOM accounts for communication and consultation with teams, conducting checkpoints, and pitch sessions. Despite the difference in time zones (from Moscow to Vladivostok), the participants, experts and organizers have always been in the same communication field.
Basic elements of the hackathon organization
1. Competent setting of tasks, roadmap;
2. Evaluation criteria and rules of conduct;
3. Getting into the target audience;
4. Budget;
5. Prize fund;
6. Moderators and technical experts to work with teams;
7. Experts in the jury.
And now there are five key points that distinguish the online hackathon from, according to the Marketing Director of the InnoSTage Group, Khalilova Ksenia
Safe online platformfor an event with the ability to withstand a large number of connections. The willingness of the team to quickly integrate the platform with the hackathon landing page. Branding opportunities and other minor nuances. The online platform becomes an interface for interaction with teams, including a lot depends on its level. There are several decent options on the market. We used the CodenRock platform.
Test "input" tasks in the selection of teams greatly facilitate the selection of participants and provide fairly objective criteria for how to make a choice.
Profiling teams and working with loners.The online hackathon allows you to apply for participation alone, and then the organizer's task is to help "pick up" the missing fighters from the same individuals and form a participating team. This can only be done through personal communications with each participant, so if you have a high target for applications, prepare resources for this in advance, it takes time.
Maintaining communication with participants while working on tasks. It is important that teams do not lose engagement and interest, maintain a working rhythm and complete the solution to the problem. Tools - chats and groups, zoom sessions
Hackathon duration. Online hackathons can take much longer than offline ones. As a result, you can get better quality prototypes of solutions.
And by the way, about merch or promo. If you decide that this is not necessary for the online format, you are wrong. It is worth paying attention to souvenirs and sending them by mail and various integrations with food delivery service, etc. Participants are pleased to receive memorable gifts, promo codes for free pizza or coffee, and organizers are pleased to receive good photo content with merchandise from the participants and positive posts on social networks.