Experiance JAM — The Serasa Experian Innovation Festival
During an entire weekend, more than 500 people participate in the innovation festival promoted by DataLab Serasa Experian, the Experiance JAM. The event was born as a small Hackathon for 80 competitors and nowadays brings visitors of many different Brazilian states to share knowledge, networking, recruitment and create solutions for all kind of challenges presented.
I bet you're thinking: "that's great! And how does it work?"
Well, let me tell you:
The festival is divided into two parts: EJ Hack and EJ Share. EJ Hack is the traditional Hackathon, a 36 hours marathon where about 200 participants organize themselves into teams and compete for money prizes. And there is also EJ Share, a whole day schedule of workshops open to the public, with a rich content that fits a wide variety of profiles: students, professionals, children and enthusiasts.
EJ Hack
A Hackathon is a programming activity. The name comes from the mix of the words "hack" and "marathon". The Hackathon aims to unite people with different backgrounds to build prototypes that could solve a problem using technology. There're many types of Hackathons, they can be collaborative or competitive and have different durations.
EJ Hack is the Hackathon of DataLab Serasa Experian. As I said before, it's a competition that receives up to 200 people and lasts an entire weekend. Currently we are organizing the 6th edition of the event, which will bring a major challenge related to agro business. Here I list some examples of challenges we have brought on previous editions:
- Using IOT to improve e-commerce experience to visually impaired people;
- Creating an unique personal ID using Blockchain;
- How to use Natural Language Processing to deal with unstructured information in legal documents;
- Data visualization for decision making.
The Hackathon happens in phases: 1st day in the morning, the participants discuss the challenges with their respective sponsors. After that, the teams work in a lean canvas, where they will point all the important information about the solution to be created: structure, technology, metrics, value proposition, etc.
Next, there's development phase: the participants will need to build a prototype of the solution. In this phase, mentors help the participants with challenges related , supporting business, methodology and technologies, while the team members dedicate time programming. There're no rules about the technology the competitors can use: they are free to create!
At last, the teams present their prototypes to the judges: 10min pitch + 5min for questions. The board is composed by specialists and relevant executives who could support the creators of the best solutions to close deals.
This is pretty much what goes by during the 36 hours of hackathon. But it’s not everything. Now, let’s talk about the workshops!
EJ Share
When we talk about innovation and technology, it's inevitable to be excited to learn and discuss so many possible subjects, right? We agree. That's why we decided to open the event not only to people who want to compete, but also to those who are thirsty for exchanging knowledge. And it was a success!
The workshops happen while EJ Hack is rocking in the next building, and they are free to the public: all you need to do is to get tickets online before the event. Many employees took the opportunity to show their relatives their workplace! We could see entire families — employees or not — participating together, exploring the content options and having fun along the Saturday afternoon.
EJ Share launch was in EJ 4, and, in two editions of it, more than 600 people of all ages and backgrounds participated in different workshops: robotics, entrepreneurship, drones building, financial education, programming for kids, magic cubes, futurism, Scrum, games development and much more :)
If you want to know more about this amazing Festival, pre-register on www.experiancejam.com.br. We can keep you posted on social media: follow EJ on Faceboook, Instagram and LinkedIn. You can also check the oficial video of one of our editions, find below the portuguese and english versions. Enjoy it and contact me if there're any questions ;)
