Day Two of Hackathon 2017 – Teams tired but confident
DPI, Guyana, November 18, 2017
As the second day of the Hackathon draws to a close, participants are confident despite signs of exhaustion.
With just under a day left in the 48-hours non-stop event where programmers or coders get to compete in teams to develop an application that will allow persons to pay their rates and taxes and manage their property details online.
The Department of Public Information (DPI) visited the venue at Pegasus and caught up with the teams.
From team myMarket, Kenneth Parris said the team has been reviewing the application stage thus far, to ensure all judging criteria are being met. Pointing out that the final result will be judged on its user-friendliness and approach Parris said, “We think our approach is pretty well thought out, so we’re just going to make sure we have everything on the list; then prepare our presentation.” The team is counting on getting sufficient rest in order to ‘push through’ the final design stages around 1-2 am.
Team Innosys’s Sonny Kothapally is confident that they have strategised well and this has allowed them to achieve timelines in execution. He opined that if this momentum is maintained, they will ‘perform satisfactorily’ when they pitch their app. At this point, Kothapally said that his team is still considering how to incorporate the end users since their input is most important.
“I’m exhausted and its very nerve wrecking. … (but) it’s coming along nicely. I’m about 70 percent complete. I still have a lot more time though,” Dirk Agard of Team Agard said.
Meanwhile, at Team Back 2 Front’s station, Haopei Yang remarked, “It’s going ok…it could be better but it’s a Hackathon so there are a lot of hiccups as you would understand so it’s expected.”
Adrian Cheong of Su code Squad said his team has progressed well and after receiving the updated checklist were reviewing to ensure all necessary steps have been taken. If anything was overlooked those will be immediately implemented, he said.
Similarly, at Intellect Storm’s table, Amrita Ramnauth is confident of their progress and was combing through the app’s functionalities in order to ascertain if anything required tweaking.
This year’s Hackathon is being held under the theme ‘Hack to the Future’. The competition which commenced at noon on Friday, November 17 sees teams of app developers, graphic designers and other ICT-skilled registrants for the 48-consecutive-hour of the event spontaneously creating IT applications to resolve specially identified social and economic problems. Criteria will include usefulness/practicality, business potential, UI/UX Design/functionality, ability to present and pitch the creation.
Teams are battling for a first place prize of $300,000, second place prize of $200,000 and third place prize of$150,000. The Hackathon concludes at 13:00hrs on Sunday.
By: Natasha Smith
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