A hackathon is a forum for programmers, during which specialists from different areas of software development work together to solve customer problems. This communication tool for small and large businesses can no doubt be called the engine of innovative technologies and fresh digital solutions to the masses. It is important that the customer, starting from the problems of his business, himself determines the task for the hackathon, and the participants build a strategy in advance to solve the problem in the most productive way. To understand what privileges hackathon participants receive, we suggest that you familiarize yourself with the success story of the winning team of the Megapolis Moscow track as part of one of the largest online hackathons in the country, VirusHack.
VirusHack took place in May this year. The Megapolis Moscow track, organized by the Moscow Innovation Agency, was attended by 78 teams from 64 Russian cities. Among the track's customers were such business sharks as ICQ New (Mail.ru Group), X5 Retail Group, SberCloud, Uma.Tech (Gazprom-Media) and Mobile Medical Technologies. Of the 50 developed solutions, 15 were selected by customers for further development. Some of the specialists at the end of the event received invitations from the partners of the track for employment. Each of the teams working on this or that order demonstrated high professional competence, experience and knowledge. But, as they say, the strongest won.
One of the hackathon participants were representatives of TalkMart42, who had previously worked on a virtual voice assistant project. Speaking at the event in a team called Buckwheat42, the guys coped better than others with the task of X5 Retail Group to develop an additional voice input function for contactless payment for purchases in Pyaterochka supermarkets.
The project was developed in Python. The prototype is based on open-source technologies for translating speech into text (speech-to-text) and a module for processing and analyzing the received text (Natural Language Understanding). Of the available libraries for converting voice to text, Kaldi was chosen, as it works quickly and provides a relatively high quality of recognition not only for Russian, but also for a number of other languages.
For ease of deployment and testing, the prototype was built in Docker technology. For each transaction, this module revealed the intentions (intents) of the user, extracted the spoken product names, as well as barcodes, loyalty card numbers, coupons, and other related information. The function worked without access to the Internet or external voice transformation services.
TalkMart42's participation in the VirusHack hackathon was given by its CEO Sergey Chernov.
“We have been interested in the topic of voice assistants for e-grocery before, but we looked primarily towards online scenarios. Thanks to the hackathon, we dived into the specifics of offline sales: we learned about the problems of noise filtering in salesrooms, customer voice separation, voice recognition without Internet access in conditions of modest computing resources, and the integration of voice control into the current user journey. This provided ideas for new use cases for voice assistants in retail,” he said.
TalkMart42 employees gained invaluable experience in developing under extreme conditions and as a result began to cooperate with one of the largest retailers in the country. At the moment, the guys, together with X5 Retail Group, are discussing the details of launching a pilot project.
According to Sergey Chernov, having won the hackathon, TalkMart42 received the opportunities and means to bring new digital products to the Russian market and attract customers to them.
“Last month, the boom in voice assistants for online grocery ordering continued. Flipkart, the largest Indian retailer with a capitalization of more than $20 billion, has launched a voice assistant, enabling its customers to order delivery in English, Hindi and two other local languages. European retailer Carrefour has launched voice-over-app ordering in France,” he explained. “There are no such cases in Russian retail yet, and this is a great opportunity to get ahead of competitors.”
TalkMart42, according to its CEO, is now piloting a Russian-language voice assistant to take online orders through the mobile apps of the largest retail players, as well as using skills for smart speakers. Another activity of TalkMart42 is to help offline retailers in voice control of self-service checkouts and information kiosks.
Sergey Chernov recommends his colleagues to participate in hackathons. In his opinion, such events can be a useful tool for business development if the task has a specific customer who is ready to implement the solution of the winning team into their business.
As the head of TalkMart42 notes, the obvious advantages of hackathons are that they provide an objective assessment (beautiful design of presentations and an abundance of development plans for a real customer are less attractive than well-written and working code and realistic plans for integrating the solution), motivate to participate with full commitment and allow you to understand in general what problems the business is facing.
“Using a simple drop-off criterion such as “clear business customer with understandable business problem” can avoid loosely organized events with an unclear commercial goal. Ideal result: turn your participation in the hackathon into a useful business case with measurable value for the customer,” he summed up.
From the words of Sergey Chernov, it becomes clear that hackathons are a ticket to life, new financial contracts and serious development prospects for start-up entrepreneurs; improving work and searching for new personnel for large businesses and, ultimately, improving the quality of service for you and me - customers.
It should be noted that one of the key organizers of hackathons in Moscow is the Moscow Innovation Agency. Thanks to such activities of the Agency, many specialists have established communication and interaction not only with the large business community, but also with city customers.
“Behind us are such successful cases as the Urban.Tech Moscow offline hackathon last year, the Megapolis Moscow track as part of the May VirusHack online hackathon during a pandemic, and others. And ahead is the autumn online hackathon “Leaders of Digital Transformation”, aimed at solving urgent problems of urban structures, with solid cash prizes for the winners and a program to “twist” the best solutions before piloting in urban infrastructure,” said Maria, Deputy General Director of the Moscow Innovation Agency Bogomolov.
The collection of applications for participation in the new hackathon will begin in August this year. Detailed information about it will appear in the near future on the website of the Moscow Innovation Agency.
Source: habr.com