Last week, QARAsoft invited over 25 people to participate in its first ever Hackathon event in Jeju Island. In just three days, this invitation-only event brought together in-house marketers and developers to collaborate on Deep Learning related projects.
Winning Criteria
Two teams, QARA and KOSHO, have competed against each other for almost 30 hours straight. The list of criteria for winning consisted of:
· Algorithmic Complexity — The algorithm has levels of sophistication and quality/intricacy
· Creativity — The algorithm is innovative and unique
· Functionality — The program is effective and highly applicable for daily use
· Organization — Coding has clarity and structure
· Business Model — The model is creative, thorough, and realistic
· Marketing Strategy — Creative strategies that fit the business model and targets the right audience and investors
· Design — The program has overall good UI/UX
· Participation — Everyone has contributed equally to the competition
Judges included Luke Changwhan Byun and Katie Bomi Son, the CEOs at QARAsoft, as well as Dr. Shim.
Event Outcome
Everyone worked around the clock to create programs geared towards helping people in the financial sector. Each team provided a unique technology with a separate business model, marketing strategy, and design. Here is what they’ve created:
Team QARA found a company called StocKloud AI.
StocKloud AI uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) to summarize company news to help financial professionals with their businesses.
Team KOSHO found a company called Glance.
Glance uses the latest Deep Learning technologies to understand, streamline, and display information related to the financial markets.
The judges voted Glance as the winner for Hackathon 2018. While the scores for both teams were high, what stood out for Glance was its functionality and its algorithmic complexity. Hogun Kee, an AI Scientist at QARAsoft, was voted the MVP for contributing the most to Glance’s technology development.
Looking Ahead
The ultimate goal of this year’s Hackathon is to apply the technologies we’ve developed for future use at the company.
Each member who participated in the Hackathon received gifts, including Airpods, AI Speaker, Starbucks gift card, three months of Netflix membership, and two days of vacation. QARAsoft invested a lot into the event, so we made sure to make good use of our time here. After the competition was over, we had a bit of time to enjoy the island’s most exotic foods and tour the famous Cheonjiyeon Waterfall.
Since our event was so successful, maybe hosting another Hackathon in the near future might not be such a bad idea. This time, we could invite more people to participate. But we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.
A Special Announcement
At the beginning of Hackathon, Luke and Katie gave a special announcement about our new upcoming Chief Technology Officer (CTO). As part of the opening jeopardy game, a question was asked about who our next CTO would be. Team QARA guessed the Junior Software Developer, Shin Jung Chul and team KOSHO guessed the Head of Back-End Development, Kevin Hyek Lee. Surprisingly, the decision was made that Shin Jung Chul would be our next CTO. Katie said that this aligns with her vision of giving younger generations more chances to step up into leadership roles. Shin Jung Chul joined QARAsoft on April of this year, and he has shown tremendous efforts ever since. He is sharp, intelligent, and extremely passionate about his job.
A Special Thanks
This event wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our interns, Kenny Lee and Amy Kang. They took care of all the logistics and handled every details involving program objectives and games. Thanks to our new interns, as well as everyone who had participated in the event, our first Hackathon was a huge success!!
To see more about the event, please check out our Hackathon video below!
