Alone we can do so little together we can do so much — Helen Keller
After several events where we helped students at KIIT University learn something new through hands-on sessions and workshops, we wanted to understand our audience and the people around us, collaborate and work together to implement ideas through what we have learned and so, we decided it was time for a hackathon. A hackathon for all creatives, designers and developers, anyone who had an idea and the courage to build it.
DSC has always strived to be the community that helps people solve local problems through innovative and creative ideas and use of technology. For the hackathon, the team met and decided on several categories like healthcare, education, safety, etc. and each member took to create problem statements for a particular category.
On the Sunday morning, while most would wake up late and spend the day leisurely, an overwhelming number of students turned up for the event, many of whom had to manage in different corners in small places, but all excited to build their ideas. To help the students more interactive and easy, we started off the session with the fun game of building the longest tower with objects. It was an absolutely fun-filled game, and we got to see amazing wonders building up with cards, notebooks, and laptops.
Wherever we go and whatever we try, we learn something new and we took the chance to help students in the hackathon understand the design thinking process of creating new products. Rituraj Banerjee, Aikansh Jain and Deepanshu Singh joined as mentors who are experts in Design and Machine Learning respectively, to guide the process and improve the ideas that the housefull of partcipants brought with them.
Rituraj then took to the stage to give a talk about design and why it is important to understand our audience to create a good product. I went further to tell everyone about how we can use wireframing as a basic process to iterate on our ideas and build a better product. We went through the design thinking process which helped everyone get a better sense of how an idea is converted to the final product through research, ideation, and several stages of iteration.
Teams of two, three, and four came forward next and chose a problem statement based on their previously chosen category. It was finally time to start building.
Through the hours of building and learning, we did not forget to take the time to step away and enjoy some fun stuff, like the magic show.
Soon after this, we were joined by Mr. Ajit Mishra, COO of Booking Jini & Ex-Microsoft Business Lead who was very happy to see students working on brilliant ideas in teams, while mentors and members of DSC KIIT joined in to guide them. He also shared the story of his life from how he went from a small place to a big corporate company and told us why he loved the environment of hackathons like The Garage Hackathon where students collaborated to build on amazing ideas that help the society.
After hours of working on the ideas, members of DSC KIIT went to each team to try out the products that they have built and chose seven teams based on the idea, the solution, implementation, and the future business idea of the product.
The seven teams then took to the stage, each presenting their idea and product to Ajit Mishra sir and answering questions from anyone in the room. The ideas were truly amazing and it was clear how a tangible solution can help so many people facing ever unheard problems.
The winning team had truly proven their skill by perfectly implementing their idea on a food adulteration project by creating a system that could detect mixed substances in milk.
We finally concluded the hackathon by giving out goodies to the winning and selected teams and taking photographs to remember that no matter how much we learn or think about an idea, it is eventually about the execution of it that helps solve problems.
No idea is too small, and all sorts of ideas have potential to change the world as we know it for the better.
Here is a lookback to the hackathon.
