Our journey in the Build Co-Kreate Demo Genius RPA hackathon!
On 5th August 2021, we received a message in our class official group that an RPA Hackathon is going to be held for KGiSL Edu students through online prodigy. We were provided with a web page link to complete the registrations. With anxiety, happiness, and dilemma I started gazing at the website. I read out all the instructions and finally decided to step into the competition. I was in a quest to search for some powerful teammates. After researching for a while, I decided to take Shrihari Bh, THEJAS KUMAR.B, and Sandeep Ravikumar from the IT department to my team.
We created a tiny Whatsapp group to discuss and fetch details from each other. Unanimously, I was elected as the team leader. We had 20–25 days to think of a better idea. Even though the problem statements were not released, we often had conference calls, and google meets to discuss RPA. We got connected and united and I literally got inner power to accomplish the tasks. We named our team “The Executors”, it was again my choice.
After a week, we finally got the problem statements released! Undoubtedly, this was the busiest day of the month! We all four had so many calls and discussions to choose any one of those 12 problems. But, we came up with our own problem statement to deal with and chose the “others” option in the form, and submitted it.
With so many talks, contradictions and contingencies we decided to do a Uipath App to increase business agility. I decided to do a Sentiment Analysis and Product recommendation model which will be helpful for an organization to analyze their customers.
Shrihari Bh suggested not to limit the model to do analysis with only one site and changed the idea to do with many user-friendly sites available on the web. It was really impressive and all teammates agreed without any microscopic objections. We were informed that the hackathon will be starting on 17th September’21 and will be ending on 19th September’21.
I started working on the project, little by little, day by day. It was difficult to manage the project amidst academics and assignments. But, I thank ourselves that we managed the time efficiently and perfectly to work on.
Before the hackathon, we had a real-world meet to facilitate better learning, and we altogether learned to an intermediate level of RPA — UiPath.
When all were said and done, Day 1 of this eminent hackathon has arrived. The morning started with an amazing inauguration via Zoom cloud meetings which introduced us to a lot of RPA-UiPath Evangelists from diverse parts of India. The inputs from Dr.Ashok bakthavathsalam (MD, KGiSL) and Mr.Tejus,(RPA Evangelist, UiPath), and Mrs.Pavithra (RPA Expert, KGiSL) boosted us to work with full effort. By the time I could complete 90% of the project, my teammates were ready with mind-blowing slides and the script to be delivered during our presentation.
We all became very nervous because we were mapped to some brainy judging facilitators who will rate our projects and give scores. Day 1 went well! We were the second team in panel 1 to present our works. The questions the mentors asked were more insightful. We did the needful corrections and demonstrated the full project on Day 2. We gave our best to answer the questions prompted regarding our project.
In the long run, on Day 3, they announced the Top 12 teams who won the “Ticket to Finale”. It was Sunday, 8.30 in the morning, I was very tired since I was working till 12.00 midnight the previous day, Bravo! We were the second-highest scorers on the scoreboard. With great enthusiasm, our team had a call, congratulated each other, and began preparing for the finals. Got wishes from other peers too.
I guess, we would have rehearsed our presentation and the script more than 10 times! The introduction was by Sandeep Ravikumar, tools were explained by Shrihari Bh, and I did the heavy lifting to explain our full project and the conclusion was by THEJAS KUMAR.B.
And yes, the rear was near! We were again the second team to present our project to the excellencies & jury panel. We were literally bombarded with many questions from all of the judges, including my Principal, Professor, and RPA Experts from reputed MNCs. But we did not lose our confidence and I answered all the questions with full determination and courage.
At the end of this fast and vast learning journey, we received a link to join for the grand finale of the RPA-BKDG Hackathon’21. And yes! It was the time for results! Ultimately, with hope, confidence, and hard work we bagged the Runner’s up title in the hackathon out of 41 teams which constituted students of all the years from both KGCAS and KGISL Institute of Technology.
HACKATHON & TAKEAWAYS : )
- Teamwork: Collaboration.
- Hackathon = Drinking from a firehose, where we are exposed to so much and we struggle to learn from broad things.
- Time Management, Content Delivery, Demonstration.
- Fast and furious learning in a short period of time.
- Winning or Losing < Participating.
- A healthy relationship with team members develops from healthy learning.
- Self-groom up!
- Heavy input = Heavy Output.
Grateful to KGISL Institute of Technology!!!
