International hackathon “Garage48” starts at YKSUG

For the first time Grodno welcomes the participants of “Garage48” international hackathon. The competition began in evening of 25th November at Yanka Kupala State University of Grodno and will last till Sunday. Teams of I.T. guys are to develop Web of mobile app, business-plan for it and present it to mentors.

Our city has been chosen to host the competition not on the occasion. As Kai Isand, one of the hackathon organizers, stated Euheny Neuhen and Siarhei Hanchar, developers of MSQRD, one of the world most popular app, studied here.

– Several years ago Euheny took part in “Garage48” and was inspired by team competitions. He wanted badly to bring that hackathon to his city. And here we are – Kai said.

The University Hall welcomed over 130 participants from Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Georgia, Turkey and even Brazil. They’ve come to our city to gather in teams and develop a prototype of working product. Most of them are students and graduates of different universities. However, they compete alongside with software developers, designers, PM’s, team leads, marketers, sales managers and even entrepreneurs, as the grand prix is $1,500 from MSQRD to run a start-up. Besides, some of prizewinners will be able to go for a little trip to Estonia, study at IPM business school: organizers have arranged a range of surprises for contestants.

Kai Isand began the event with the proposition for the most initiative participants to present their ideas within 90 seconds. Within the minute and a half contestants should determine the main idea of the project, possible ways of the realization, commercialization options and announce specialists wish-list.

During the three-hours’ presentation participants proposed 27 projects. Those were the proposals for development of services and apps, which might solve a range of social issues and make people’s life easier. Among them were: Web-app for medical purposes, which is aimed to monitor doctors’ duties, book the queue and get the information about the medicines in the city drug stores. Some ideas were about maximum simple and functional trading platforms, which allow user choose from the variety of products the most advantageous one. Besides, the participants proposed several ideas for business – special assistant services for “white collars”. The participants also proposed ideas in fields of computer gaming, music, leisure, travel, mass-media, education and art.

The next stage was team gathering: at the university lobby “idea generator” posters appeared, where participants put stickers with their names declaring the wish to join the team. By the midnight made-up teams of developers began to work, which would last for two days. During this, the teams would be consulted by mentors – representatives of successful international IT companies, including Grodno. The results would be assessed on Sunday, 27th November by the experts from Exposit, Intexsoft, *instinctools.

Partners of the event are MSQRD, SPACE, Yanka Kupala State University of Grodno and High Tech Park in Grodno.

Info

«Garage48» started on the initiative of six entrepreneurs, who met in Estonian start-up clubs. The first event was organized in April, 2010. The organizers managed to invite 100 participants within one week, and after two weeks of the start-up, the event was organized in Africa. “The pride of the Garage48” is three invested companies: Campalyst.com (social monitoring of mass-media services), QminderApp.com (online queue termination system) and MightyFingers.com (HTML5 engine for game development). Nowadays such contests are being arranged in Asia, Africa, Eastern and Central Europe.

Hakathon makes it possible for the hundreds of talented students and graduates to declare their ideas, embody it and get financing to bring it up and improve. Exactly “Garage48” made MSQRD team recognized in 2015.

The first “Garage48” was held in Belarus in 2013 and gathered more than 100 participants.