Flockathon: Where ideas are forged into reality
A hackathon (also known as a hack day, hackfest or codefest) is an event in which computer programmers and others involved in software development and hardware development, including graphic designers, interface designers and project managers, collaborate intensively on software projects.
This is how Wikipedia defines a hackathon.
What. A. Drag.
Hackathons at Flock are fun. Not the partying-at-a-night-club kind of fun. But more like a wild, 24-hour creative party with pizzas on the house, limited sleep, unlimited imagination and a drive to build something that time, work or that super urgent critical bug-fix may not permit you to build otherwise.
The Great Delhi Flockathon lived up to every word of what a hackathon could and should be. With close to 10 teams up and ready to fight it out for the top prize, (or rather ready to binge on pizzas), the hackathon began on a Friday afternoon.
The teams set out to work and following is a blow by blow account of the what happens when a bunch of immensely talented people (a.k.a Directians), along with a powerful real time messaging platform (i.e. Flock) showcase an endless ocean of possibilities. Here are some highlights, described in the words of their creators…
“We thought of building an extension to Flock, called Flocklets, that can be embedded in any business' website. This allows customers to chat with the Support team through Flock seamlessly, right on the website itself. No app downloads, no hold times on the telephone and no pesky emails. Just the thought of this simple solution would make any business owner smile, and we made it happen.”, says Yatin Sarbalia, who leads the iOS team at Flock. Apparently, winning pool tournaments and dance offs are not enough for Yatin, as this time he led his team to the top with a simple yet extremely sophisticated tool.
Our resident fitness buff, Prateek Khandelwal, introduced four brand new features for iOS clients, which bagged him the runners-up trophy. Not getting a real trophy was a downer, but gift vouchers were enough to make him punch the air, Brett Lee style. Talking about one of the features, he says, “Spotlight search is brand new to iOS 9 and you’ll see it rolling out on the actual client, thanks to the hackathon. It’s an extremely easy way to search contacts and groups, barring the hassle of tapping, swiping and scrolling just to say hi to your boss on Flock. Well, ‘hi’ should never be that hard.”
Sharing the runner-up spot with Prateek, was the cool trifecta of Ayush J, Aman and Anshuman. The AAAs, with their ninja programming skills run the Android machinery at Flock. This amazing team came up with the kick-ass idea of Geofencing, used in this case for spontaneous meetings. “Ever wanted to have an impromptu meeting and had to run around looking for people? Now, with our meeting bot, that’s a thing of the past . Send a command to set up a meeting with the required bunch of people and it’ll identify their locations to tell you if a meeting is possible”. No, this is not 2050, with drones keeping an eye on you. This is just Flock with its myriad extensions.
Finishing up on the podium were two more teams, grabbing some generous prizes. All thanks to our Judges in another city, connected through Flock!
“To begin with, we had more than 11 ideas, all scribbled on a white board”, says Saransh, who leads automation effort at the Flock workstation. His team came up with a seamless Google calendar integration. “Because why use eight different types of task managers, event planners and email reminders, when you can build all of it into Flock”, chimes in Tanushee.
Wrapping up the final spot was Ayush “The-Good-Samaritan” Goel, who opines that great conversations must never be hindered by language barriers. Specially on a platform like Flock, that encourages free flowing communication. So what if your clients are French, or your co- workers span over different continents and speak different languages? Or, there isn’t anything stopping you if you feel like speaking in German today (because, why not?). Enter Automatic text translations. Right here at Flockathon!
If this teaser has already left you dizzy, hold on as there’s more in store. Many more hackathons, better features on the Flock platform and more power to you, the users. So, if you haven't checked out web hooks on Flock, that made all these cool hacks possible, you're missing out on a lot of fun!
You can also catch us at India Hacks Conference by Hacker Earth on 19th March, 2016 in Bengaluru. Drop by and say Hi!
-Authored by Shitij Chadha
