‘On the Move’ App Successfully Connects Miami to the World
For the sixth year in a row, and with the support of Wyncode Academy, the eMerge Americas Hackathon attracted teams from across the area and around the globe to innovate and compete at the new Miami Beach Convention Center on Saturday, April 27. This year’s prize? $10,000 cash and the opportunity to meet and greet Bill McDermott, CEO of SAP.
More than thirty teams of 2–5 members assembled to participate in the 12-hour hackathon. The objective? Build technology that connects and transcends borders, collaborating with other ecosystems and individuals. To win, each team had to rise to the challenge of thinking, developing, designing and presenting a technological solution that would provide a great user experience.
How do you face such a challenge? How do you get to the final proposal? How do you manage the time in this code marathon? The SilverLogic shared its secret formula in “4 Rules to Win a Hackathon” and we used this approach again to win in April.
Winning app
The SilverLogic, a custom software engineering company and solution architect based in Boca Raton, Florida, sent two teams to participate in the challenge. The teams placed first and fifth, with the winning “Silver Eagle” team developing an app that allowed users to plan custom activity in some location within a given window of time. The app was a completely functional native Android app featuring activities near the user that could be completed during the time the user is free.
How it works
Users set the time they can allocate to do activities and the types of places they want to go to. Once this data is inserted the app geolocates the user and automatically creates a schedule of where the user starts their journey. These activities can be changed to include other activities and restaurants but the app must consider the amount of time the user has allocated and the transportation time. This app was meant for anyone that is in a new city who might want to use their available hours to explore instead of waiting in the hotel for their flight.
The SilverLogic Participates in the eMerge Americas Hackathon for the fifth consecutive year
Over the years, The SilverLogic has returned to the eMerge Americas Hackathon, always placing at the top and eager to innovate, more united than ever, with something we learned, and ready for the next Hackathon. (See this profile of Levels, our augmented reality solution for last year’s hackathon.)
2015 — Drawables | 2016 — PlumCash | 2017 — RealDeal | 2018 — Levels | 2019 — OnTheMove
Why competitions like this are so important for the community
Why should anyone care about hackathons? It’s simple! Competition drives innovation and innovation delivers a unique advantage to companies and societies.
The hackathon environment concentrates the experience of teamwork, design, prototyping, testing, refinement, and delivery into a 12- or 24-hour period. Teams must have the skills, but they must also learn and adapt in a “real” competitive environment. A stress test like a hackathon provides memorable insights for developers that can positively influence their future work. Every company is seeking innovation to increase their productivity and efficiency. At hackathons, groups of talents sit together to change the world challenge by challenge.
What makes Hackathons so special? In a Hackathon, developers work at mastering requests that matter to the sponsors. These requests could be the use of their APIs or tools, as well as discovering and developing new ways to promote their company service/product. For example, the Money 2020 Vegas Visa hackathon offered sizable prizes to those who used their APIs to facilitate payment processing in a particular situation.
This type of event puts developers and designers in a position where they have to practice all their knowledge, skills and do constant research to present an idea and a functional app in less than 24 hours (or in the case of the eMerge Americas Hackathon 12 hours).
Why send your company team to attend a Hackathon?
Because innovation is the key responsibility of R&D/Innovation departments, hackathon events enable organizational teams to embrace innovation in their companies. They let developers and designers apply their knowledge for a complete project in a compressed timeframe (a product life-cycle stress test!) and learn what is needed in an inclusive environment.
With this approach, when a team member goes back to work, they bring to the entire organization a fresh mind full of ideas, with the knowledge of new APIs and a new perspective to promote innovation by looking at R&D challenges in a new way. To innovate you have to learn and what better way than going to a place full of talented individuals who can share their point of view, tips and tricks, and allocate time to think.
Companies often can’t afford to test innovative ideas because it comes with a high risk, just a small circle gets this opportunity. This is why some companies are starting to offer paid trips to hackathons. By allowing your employees to go into an environment of innovation you’re investing in your company’s future.
At The SilverLogic, we send our members to a variety of local and out-of-state hackathons so they have time to explore their skills, learn new ones and have a space to shine. We all want to feel like a winner but in a corporate company, it’s hard to do so. By winning multiple coding competitions and awards, our highly skilled development teams design solutions that satisfy requirements and budgets while simplifying collaboration to maximize results. Leveraging the powerful transparency of agile and scrum, our teams deliver high-quality solutions with lightning speed, feature by feature, exactly what our clients need.
About The SilverLogic (TSL)
TSL is a custom software engineering company and solution architect based in Boca Raton, Florida. Our team leverages cutting-edge technologies and tools, such as iOS and Android apps, AR, blockchain, and IoT, to develop custom solutions that save businesses time and money and turn costly business problems or bottlenecks into streamlined profitable solutions.
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Guest Blog Writer
David Hartmann
Founder and CEO, The SilverLogic
CSM with degrees in Computer Science and Mathematics, David leads TSL to architect platforms and innovative technology solutions combining APIs and cutting-edge technologies, such as AR and IoT. His mission is to streamline the process of bringing innovative ideas to life in order to enable more people to build amazing user experiences.
