BRACathon

BRACathon was the last hackathon I participated! Unlike most of our (my) hackathons, we managed to create a working project this time. Our project literally have zero bugs. Although we technically could not manage to create search options, message read and parsing options and logout options but we manage to do parsing from a given text, login. So half of the tasks were done. But this is by far the worst hackathon management I have ever seen in my life. I have been to almost every hackathons in last two-three years. So, what did BRACathon do?

First of all, the food was amazing. They kept us well fed, there was continuous supply of water and coffee as well. But we did not have much sleeping couch. Finally, the weirdest thing is that the best judge gave the worst decisions, ever!

We had 12–13 problem sets and they gave one/two prize for every category except one. Our problem set has two participants including us, so we will have one prize. The problem set is to create a Microfinance Data Access app (in android) for BRAC Organization so that their Branch Managers can easily send and receive data to and from the HQ. Moreover, the area managers and regional managers will have a easy data access.

In the solution, we have set up MySQL localhost db on my laptop and connect to our through Php. Data send and receive was done through JSON parsing. We were not able to do encrypt the logging data in that limited time span however, it still worked for two users. And we could have set up a dummy user logging credentials in android, but we thought it would be better to have a REAL login. While sending data to db, the managers will only need to write 9–12 characters (in the beginning), for example 129-NL-12 will become Micro insurance-Number of Loan-12. We have kept all of these in a ArrayList and access it via hashmap. So, the branch managers will not only have to go through the lots of details, they already know the codes, they are already sending this codes through SMS. We just fastens a process that is already in action plus servers will not have to parse this sms anymore. App will directly parse this message and send it to server.

Our opponent was a company, mPower mobile or something I guess. They had 5 team members where each one of them has at least four years of experience. They did not demonstrate anything. They should a process where managers will need to go through 5 screens before sending one entry. Data will come from excel file which is slow as well. They have system for non-smartphone users where they will send sms (the old system). 10 minutes presentation, they spent quite a time in fixing the presentation slides and everything. They told their server WILL be in ASP and told they WILL use a lots of open source kits.

Finally they won it, without writing any REAL working codes.

I don’t what BRAC were thinking by organizing this contest/hackathon. 36 hours is extremely important and crucial to us, especially before our final term. I don’t think they know but it is extremely hard to work 30 hours straight (I attended 1 hours 10 minutes late, 1 hour for prayer break, slept three hours and one hour extra). It is harder to seat in a chair which has no lumber support what so ever and has a wooden frame instead of cushions. We ate junk foods and flooded our system with caffeine.

The slogan of the contest is “App for social good”! WTH!