What went down at Devengers HackNight 1.0

There’s been an outbreak of bad code all over the Universe. So, all the best developers are gathering together to fight the bad code, bugs, compile-time errors and much more. This is a never-ending battle, and so the developers need to get organized.

That’s why we at Skillenza have kick-started the Devengers Initiative. This will bring together developers from all over to fight the good fight against Bad Code. The initiative is powered by Microsoft. The focus is to create a substantial shift in developer relations and bringing like-minded developers together from around the globe. The program revolves around building community, evangelizing new technology and trends in the current scenario.

We are looking for the creation of products that solve problems, as well as are inspiring, engaging, and entertaining.

As part of Devengers, we are organizing a series of mini-hackathons of 12 hours’ duration. During these 12 hours, Devengers get together in teams to code and build a product centred around various AI/ML related themes. The hackathons are not meant for mere product building; there are also hiring opportunities from Anchor Partners and other companies.

The first of these mini-hackathons was HackNight 1.0. It took place over the weekend of August 31st — 1st September 2019 and Microsoft was the sponsor. But we also had SignEasy as one of the Anchor Partners.

Due to great excitement generated by the Devenger community, we had over 1400 registrants on the platform. Out of these, 250 participants were shortlisted and invited. We saw a crowd of 230+ developers devenging at HackNight 1.0.

If you had registered and were not able to attend (or had not heard of the event!), we invite you to the next iteration of the Devengers Initiative: HackNight 2.0!

The venue of the battle was the Microsoft Office in Bellandur, Bangalore. The theme was focused on AI/ML.

The problem statement was to predict, with the help of given data, whether an employee should go for treatment or not. After the creation of the predictive model, participants needed to build a UI where the HR Manager sees the report and makes a decision as to whether to allow the employee to go for treatment or not.

The event started at 5 p.m. with the check-in at the Microsoft Office. And as always, we distributed swag like T-shirts, stickers, notebooks and other goodies.

At 6 p.m., Prajnyasis Biswal (known as PB), Program Manager from Skillenza talked about the problem statement and clarified any issues. Following this deep discussion, Vivek Sridhar, Senior Product Marketing Manager from Microsoft showed participants how to use and deploy on Azure.

After Vivek Sridhar finished his knowledgeable presentation, it was time for the Anchor Partners to educate the participants. Souvik Datta and Sudeep Shukl from SignEasy talked about their company, the challenges they face and the kind of people they were looking for in a good hire. They were also curious to see what the participants would come up with.

At 7 p.m., it was time for the battle to begin in earnest. As mentioned earlier, 230+ Devengers took part to begin their attack on the problem statement. 70% of the attendees were professional developers & data scientists from big name companies like Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, InMobi, etc. So, we certainly brought out the big guns!

The Devengers were not left floundering during the hackathon. We had 3 industry mentors giving advice and suggestions to the participants with their solutions. They were Rishikesh SR, who is Co-founder of Rapido, Rahul Vishwakarma, the CEO of Matelabs and Abhisekh Gupta, Senior Developer Advocate, Microsoft.

During the hackathon, our social media savvy attendees demonstrated their excitement on Twitter. Twitter trended with #HackOnAzure and #WeAreDevengers. So, it was fun as well as a serious event. Of course, participants refuelled themselves with tons of coffee (1000 cups consumed overnight!), dinner and snacks.

This refuelling seemed to help. The teams built training models with almost 85% — 95% accuracy. Even developers who were somewhat new to ML did great! After all, with tutorials explaining ML step-by-step on Azure, even the freshest newbies can do well.

Developers also explored Azure’s functionalities; they made use of Azure’s Cognitive Services APIs, code functions and even browsed code samples.

We received the final submission in the morning. When all the dust was settled, 25 teams were shortlisted on the basis of their accuracy of their models, frontend and UI. These 25 teams got to present their ideas and the winners were selected from among them.

Without further ado, here is the list of winners:

• 1st Prize — $400 USD. DarKnights
• 2nd Prize — $200 USD. Naam meh kya Rakha hai
• 3rd Prize — $100 USD. Bazinga

There was also a special recommendation.

Didn’t that sound like a lot of fun? If you’ve missed out, don’t worry. HackNight 2.0 is coming up really soon — in fact, on September 14th! With 10 other HackNights to follow after that. All you have to do to attend is to head on over to the Skillenza page, register on the platform and become part of the Devengers community.

Have fun and always fight the good fight against Bad Code!