Codec Host Inaugural Hackathon 2019

Codec were delighted to host their very first “Hackathon” recently at their head office on Adelaide Road. The brainchild of Cristhian Fernandez, this unique event was conceived as a means of fostering innovative ideas towards solving technical problems whilst promoting peer to peer learning and most importantly having fun!

Taking place over the course of a Saturday, this Hackathon consisted of 20 participants who were divided into 4 teams. The suggested subjects for guidance were around the areas of AI and IoT and the day kicked off with key presentations from Codec Dynamics CRM Consultants, Cathal Noonan and Lukasz Kuron to all participants on:

• Introduction to Cognitive Services and AI
• Introduction about Microsoft Bot Framework and LUIS

Each team then set about the task of researching their own ideas using these subjects as a guide.  All 4 teams presented their ideas at the end of the day to the judging panel as well as the other teams.

The outcome was a mix of proposals looking to solve internal challenges within Codec and creating potential customer facing products.

Competition was strong amongst the teams and there were some excellent ideas generated through this process. The overall winning idea was a chatbot to assist in resource scheduling. The other team ideas presented on the day included:

• Email automation for Customer Support using AI
• Sentiment Analysis for case management
• Predictive maintenance using IoT

Winners were chosen using the following criteria:

• Quality and innovative nature of the idea
• Ability/Quality of Demo
• Presentation skills of the Team
• Applicability in existing projects/customers
• Other teams’ vote

Overall the day was a great success and a lot of fun was had by all!  Food and drink were supplied throughout the day to keep the energy levels going and there were a selection of prizes including fit bits, headphones and kindles provided as incentives to the teams.

We are excited about planning the next Hackathon at a future date and there are plenty of great ideas and feedback from participants to be used at future iterations. According to the organisers, going forward there is a plan to involve more staff from different disciplines including sales, marketing and project management (not only the “tech” people). Not only is this a great way of generating actionable ideas but it also an opportunity to get to know work colleagues that you wouldn’t normally interact with.