Studying Time: 4 minutes
The clock strikes 12. A bead of sweat trickles down Akshay’s brow. The workforce’s presentation is due now, however there’s a bug that wants consideration. Because the projector boots up and the judges gear up, Akshay and the workforce know that they solely have one alternative — to debug throughout their pitch.
It appears virtually not possible to tug off, however someway, they handle to pitch their product and debug the bug on the identical time. The judges don’t betray any response. The workforce is uncertain if this bug will value them the coveted prize.
In the meantime, on the opposite facet of the new MoEngage workplace, two groups sit dejected. They thought that they had a killer thought, full with a killer presentation deck. However they didn’t get referred to as by way of to the subsequent spherical.
The strain is palpable throughout video calls. Workforce members from world wide sit linked by way of giant cameras and TV screens put in across the workplace. There’s a desk on one nook stuffed with pizzas and beers, each left untouched as a result of nobody appears hungry. The Pink Bull, nevertheless, is an enormous hit. It’s what stored groups up all night time. And no, this isn’t an advert for Pink Bull.
38 groups. 168 contributors. 24 hours.
The MoEngage Hackathon 2022 is on! It’s the first of it’s type, constructed for the post-pandemic world: a hybrid hackathon. Some groups take part on-line, some offline, and a few combined. However one factor is in frequent — they’re all right here to win.
This turns into evident when one of many judges, the CTO of MoEngage, Yashwanth Kumar, confesses that it’s onerous to shortlist a winner as a result of all concepts appear nice.
One other participant quips that we should always change month-to-month OKR planning actions with a hackathon as an alternative. Wouldn’t that be enjoyable!
It’s true! Productiveness ranges have actually skyrocketed earlier than and through this hackathon. Actually, two of the core committee members, Suraj and Nilesh, even constructed out a full-fledged hackathon administration and participation portal in simply 6 hours! The portal is full with a coding backend and services to register, add workforce members, add concepts, slide decks, and pitch movies.
They did this as a result of the generic hackathon portal was charging an outrageous charge, which our Co-Founders believed could be higher off given as a prize quantity to the winners. Because the saying goes:
What’s At Stake
Our organizers and volunteers actually upped the ante on this one by creating seven new successful classes other than the primary, second, and third prizes:
- Wolf of Wall Avenue: The product with the most important enterprise affect, ideally as a brand new income stream.
- Starvation Video games: A product that improves developer productiveness by a big quantity.
- Million $ Child: One patch to manufacturing which might save most prices and enhance GMV.
- Sidekick: Any hack to cut back assist TAT or shut a assist ticket robotically.
- Fireproof: Any patch to manufacturing which instantly impacts buyer expertise or NPS.
- Minority Report: A repair to manufacturing which reduces safety danger at MoEngage
- Non-tech Hack: Any groups that solely have enterprise, design, gross sales, or advertising groups as members.
The Winners
The target of this Hackathon was to harness creativity and experience and supply revolutionary options to the MoEngage platform. Each workforce over-delivered right here: most shows appeared like firm pitches made to VCs!
Whereas the judging panel had a tricky time shortlisting the finalists, it’s secure to say that the successful groups actually deserved it.
Actually, even the workforce that was debugging throughout the presentation, Akshay’s workforce, gained! And the opposite two groups who had been dejected as a result of they didn’t get shortlisted to the subsequent spherical? They gained too. Seems, the judges had been so bought on their pitch deck that they didn’t want a last spherical.
All in all, it was a loopy 48 hours the place we realized that innovation in tech can convey folks collectively in fantastic methods. Groups used new know-how to convey down the price of current techniques. For instance, Mohit and workforce introduced down prices of 1 service by 40% utilizing Scylla DB. In the meantime, Neha’s workforce constructed a real-time debugger for Stream campaigns, and Nilesh’s workforce added SQL based mostly segmentation.
Everybody who participated obtained a cool field of goodies which included a hoodie, laptop computer stickers, and a laptop computer sleeve. The organizers obtained their due thanks for internet hosting an amazing occasion over a dinner at Bier Library, Koramangala, Bangalore.
Whereas there have been some challenges internet hosting a hybrid occasion and coordinating this inside a short while body, the sensation of hacking collectively along with your teammates, whether or not offline or on-line, was an unmatched expertise.
Would you wish to take part within the subsequent MoEngage Hackathon? Take a look at our careers web page!
