Hackathon event

Grade 12 students of Pune-based college have organised a Hackathon event, that will see tech-enthusiasts students from classes ninth to junior college, from across the city preparing their own gadgets, which will be later developed by an IT company. 

 

Pune based Bishop’s Junior College, organised 'HackReaction', a Hackathon this weekend in which students from several schools have been invited to participate.

Naman Dua student and organisor said, "Usually such Hackathon is organised for IT sectors but this is meant for tech-savvy children. HackReaction is designed to give students a platform where they can enhance their soft skills, learn new technical skills and develop solutions to problems in the social and business sectors. Additionally, the drive behind this initiative is to give students a more hands-on experience rather than rest on the merit of bookish knowledge. ThoughtWorks, the global software design and development company has always been passionate about the role of technology in bringing awareness and positive impact to the society and sees this Hackathon as a great way to get younger people kicked about technology and its potential in the most interesting way."

 

Shreya Gaur, along with Naman Dua and Kaleb Standen, students of twelfth standard studying in Bishop’s Junior College, approached software company “ThoughtWorks” about a month ago with a wish to do a Hackathon with students. The idea was liked by both parties and ThoughtWortks decided to sponsor it and provide its office premise as the venue.

 

Gaur said, “usually Hackathon is well known concept in IT company where the experts of IT work on a single project like a marathon to complete the task. Similarly we are living in technology world and these days with help of net connection is assess to all via our smart phones and also Wi-fi. Students are growing and learning lot from technology and they like to adopt new way of learning by using search engines and their curiosity of knowing new things they spent most of the time on tech. This is the platform we have created them and such will be help them to bring awareness and positive impact. As by this platform many students and youngsters will come to know the ethics as well as potential of developing the software design will come up.”

 

 

She added, “We got a huge response. Around 100 students across from Pune's school and colleges have participated in it. These participants are given computers and they will be working on various encoding and coding computer languages for 24 hours and will be preparing a software. While interacting with some of the participants we came across that some want to work on a gadget that would aid visually impaired people in their day-to-day activities.”

 

 “It’s really nice to see students from 9th Grade to 12th Grade taking interest in programming. It’s one thing to be interested in programming and it’s a completely different level to utilise programming to solve real world problems. After all, isn’t this the same thing that makes the biggest IT players in India?. While talking to students it’s very amazing and raw ideas and the technical knowledge is also making us think in more vital areas. At present we are just created a platform where these children will get the opprounity to decode their softwares and later on developing such software we will take a call later and definitely will engaged students in it who had pitched in the idea.” said Quazi Mohd, coordinator of this Hackathon for ThoughtWorks.

Chirag Doshi, the office principal of ThoughtWorks was quite kicked to see the enthusiasm of these students. “It feels glad to see these young minds brimming with so many interesting ideas. I can already see a bright future for them and would be more than glad to have some of them as interns in our company in the near future.”

 

 ThougthWorks’ Pune office is not only playing host to the Hackathon and its participants but also sponsoring the prize money for the winners. After these students finish their coding, they will make their presentations in front of the judges. The three winning teams, each consisting of four participants will win prize money at the end.