Josh Technology Group

JTG Hackathon April 2019: The Highlights

For JTG coders, coding isn’t just work; it’s a way of life. We love what we do and what’s more? We embrace our passion to make significant contributions to our field of work- technology!

Hackathon is no mere coding competition. It’s a 3-day carnival with tons of fun, late nights, great food, all night gaming and YES- our best coders butting heads to come up with the most daredevil ideas and products! 

How did the 3-Day Hackathon unfold?

The first day of Hackathon started with an opening discussion where every team presented the final idea that they would be working on (there had been multiple meetings and brainstorming sessions leading to this meeting). Hackathon t-shirts and sippers were distributed among the teams and the organizing committee, pictures clicked, and the event kicked off with much good cheer and gamesmanship.

The teams all worked in the same room with two days and two nights of conceptualizing, coding, experimenting, and comparing notes to come up with tangible dummies for their ideas. Snacks and drinks were on the house with goodies heaped on a table to keep the morale high (creativity runs dry on an empty stomach, don’t you think?)

With pulsating music playing from speakers, the vibe was a festive one. The extended weekend was an action-packed one, and JTG coders ALWAYS rise to the occasion when it comes to partying till the sun comes up!

While the days saw bustling activity and tons of work getting done, the evenings and nights were one long party. The overnight stay on the office premises meant all-night gaming, great music, beer on the house, a never-ending supply of snacks, sumptuous buffet dinner, board games galore, table tennis, foosball, and more!

The final day (Sunday) started rather slow with the contenders sleeping off their exhaustion and refueling with a piping hot breakfast of poha, sandwiches and coffee. There was a flurry of activity with the teams preparing for the final demonstration of their finished products. 

The presentations by the teams kicked off late morning with a variety of snacks and nibbles doing the rounds. Each presentation was followed by a question and answer round where the teams were grilled on their methodologies and ideas. 

While there was a lot of competitiveness in the air, the feeling of camaraderie was also running high. A final voting round resulted in the Augmented Reality Treasure Hunt winning the first prize. The April Hackathon ended with a nice hot lunch and lots of goofy selfies!

The 3rd Hackathon

Solving coding challenges, puzzles, and brainstorming for the best ideas is a great way to hone skills and taking coding to the next level. After 2 successful Hackathons, Josh coders rose to the occasion yet again with 8 teams coming up with the most clutter-breaking ideas focused on solving pain points across different areas of life.

Here are the 8 projects undertaken by our coders for this year’s coding battle:

Project 1 – Email Manager

The whole idea behind this project was to automate processes that are currently being done manually by the HR, thereby creating a smoother process of sending out emails without lapses. This included several tasks like automatic emails for birthdays, work-anniversaries, festivals, monthly birthday celebrations manager, automatic emails to the new joiners, etc. 

Project 2 – Augmented Reality Treasure Hunt

Team 2 came up with a Treasure Hunt application which uses augmented reality to provide clues that can only be seen through the app. The user will be getting clues as textual and visual content augmented in the real world, like for example when viewing a particular object or being in a particular spot. 

Project 3 – Mattermost Plugin – Google Assistant/Alexa

Team 3 came up with a concept that used mattermost plugin for integrating voice actions through google assistant or Alexa. Features include voice action to update user’s status in mattermost and voice action to get user’s total unread messages count.

Project 4 – MM-2-Email

Team 4 also came up with an idea where mattermost plugin was used to send all mattermost posts and replies of particular channel to an email thread. Features include sending an email whenever something is posted in mattermost channel and sending replies of Mattermost on the same email thread.

Project 5 – Augmented Reality Notifications

Team 5 came up with an android application that allows the user to see mobile phone notifications on their hand using Augmented Reality. More options can be viewed using different hand gestures. During the demonstration the team used a phone’s camera for showing the AR objects but this should be done using devices like Google Lens. 

Project 6 – Tuckshop Automation

An android application that reduces the manual effort the goes into maintaining the office’s tuckshop records. An app created on the lines of a shopping app that allows users to choose and buy products available in the tuck shop. The user can also see his outstanding amount and purchase history on the app. 

Project 7 – Chatbot

An application that can help in the field of recruitment and automate the process of answering candidate queries through the use of chatbots. Data can be fetched from the existing database as per the requirement / intent of the question framed by the candidate. 

Project 8 – Exoogle Search 

The project involved a chrome plugin which would interact with custom google search engine to improve search relevance for technology-related topics. Exoogle involves a complete system that interacts with the search engine and takes recommendations from users and peers to bring up more relevant results for searches.