“Garage48” finished at YKSUG
The winner is the team from Grodno, working on the messenger app for the busy people called “Scop”.
The competition began at YKSUG on 25th November and gathered over 100 participants. Those were students and graduates of universities, software developers, designers, PM’s, team leads, marketers, sales managers and even entrepreneurs from Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Georgia, Turkey and Brazil.
The task was to develop a software product and its business-plan within 48 hours.
– For two days participants worked hard to turn their ideas into real projects, which might be further promoted in the IT-service market, – said Darya Shabala, one of the hackathon organizers. – A lot of participants brought sleeping bags with themselves: participants slept at University in order not to lose time on road to the hotel and back. Organizers arranged appetizers and hot tea&coffee.
On the first day the participants only presented their projects and thoughts of realization. The second day was fully devoted to the work. Developers designed a code for the app, designers worked on the appearance of the app or service, PMs planned problem solving, team communication and side issues, marketers designed promotion plans. And finally, on the third day teams polished their projects, considering comments and suggestions from mentors, who were representatives from IT companies from Estonia and Belarus. The contest ended with winners’ awarding. The competitors were addressed by Alena Livak, Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics of YKSUG.
– «Garage48» hackathon became possible mostly thanks to our famous graduate, MSQRD leader Euheny Neuhen, ‑ said Alena Livak. – I am so happy many participants came here to test their skills, to show their abilities. Participation in «Garage48» is a push to development. MSQRD itself was firstly presented during such event a year ago – and it got the prize! Now you see how high these men soar.
By the way, Euheny Neuhen and Siarhei Hanchar, popular face-swap app developers, addressed their greetings to the participants of the hackathon via video message. They congratulated everyone on the participation and had marked they would evaluate the results and take play active role during the vote.
– We hope the money prize for the 1st and 2nd places will be used for the further development of startup, ‑ said Euheny. – If you want your project 100% realized – make a public announcement, as we did. Some time ago we promised to launch MSQRD before Christmas Holidays. And at the end of December, 2015 world discovered our project!
The mentors decided that the best project was the project of Grodno team, “Scop” messenger, where text message is being sent without typing. They won the first prize of $ 1,000 from MSQRD
– We used to work on this app for the long time yet, ‑ told Grodno developers. – This year we decided to publish our project, let the users check it out, to see whether there would be any feedback, shall we promote it. And we got it!
The 2nd place and $ 500 prize went for “Meetalica” project. The app helps music-keen people find people with the same tastes in music and join up a band.
The third place was given to Intexsoft team with “IMeetU” app: they proposed a service, which purpose is to synch schedules of several busy persons to find a time for them to meet.
Moreover, teams were given special prizes, like training at IPM business school, trip to Estonia to the start-up conference, “Arduino” toolset for passionate robot designers. Those went to the developers of “131” (medical app, which helps monitor doctors’ schedules in polyclinics), «ContactUs» (app for searching most profitable product in online shops) and «Singapic» (app for picking a music according to the uploaded image).
The next «Garage48» hackathon by name «Women in Tech» will take place on 2-4 December, 2016 in Parnu (Estonia).
