Hi all! I am Vladimir Baidusov, Managing Director in the Department of Innovation and Change at Rosbank, and I am ready to share the results of our Rosbank Tech.Madness 2019 hackathon. A lot of material with photos is under the cut.
Design and concept.
In 2019, we decided to play with the word Madness (since the name of the Hackathon is Tech.Madness) and build the concept around it. This is where the idea to combine the style of the Burning Man festival and the Mad Max movie came from. There were many different sketches, from super crazy to cosmic. The concept had to be visible everywhere: from the landing page to sticker packs for laptops and Telegram.
We decided to “decorate” the mentors on the landing a little. When hovering over a portrait of a mentor, the mask disappeared from his face, making it possible to see him in his usual form.
Location
The cost of a site for 120 people for 48 hours varies from 800 to 000 rubles - this is a significant cost item. We thought: why not use our office? Moreover, two innovative zones on the ground floor have recently opened there, where 1 people could easily accommodate.
Then the most interesting thing began: coordination with all services so that 120 people could work 48 hours in a row. There are many services: security, administrative and economic management, fire safety and others. It was, frankly, not easy.
Of course, we had to make sure that our guests feel great all 48 hours: three meals a day, round-the-clock availability of snacks and drinks. And, of course, Red Bull promo. Where without them?
The visual design of the office was also seriously approached: at the entrance, the participants were greeted by aeromen (and some especially dedicated employees).
There are cool themed stickers all over the office.
A photo zone was placed in the atrium so that employees who went home on Friday understood that madness would be going on in the office throughout the weekend!
Promotion and promo. Collection of applications for participation.
To attract participants, a good media coverage was needed. We placed banners on Rusbase, Habr, VC.ru, made promo campaigns on Facebook and VK, made announcements at universities, and advertised the event through bloggers.
Outcome: Approximately 500 applications received. These are both team applications and single applications, from which we further collected teams.
Selection
At the end of the promo campaign, the selection of participants from those who submitted applications began. Preference was given to those who provided profiles with links to the repository where you could see the code. As a result, the ranking was of three types: “definitely take”, “maybe take”, “definitely do not take”. Among the applications there were those where the code was provided, but, when immersed in it, it turned out that the task was from the “Hello world” series. Of course, they tried not to take such profiles.
Selection in such situations is very important. Why? The answer is simple: since the mechanics stipulate that the teams do not know about the tasks, but only about the directions, it was important for us to make sure that only those who would be ready to solve them would gather on the site.
Event mechanics
We decided not to change the mechanics, we applied the same one as in the previous hackathons. The tasks that the teams will work on, we made up ourselves. They were invented by digital teams of retail and corporate business areas, subsidiaries of Rosbank: Rusfinance Bank, ALD Automotive, Rosbank Insurance.
The teams that came to our site on the day of the start received tasks in a random order: the captains went out one by one and pulled out tasks in much the same way as it happens at the exam at the university.
And, of course, each task had its own mentor or mentors. They helped the teams develop the prototype for the full 48 hours of the hackathon.
How do we evaluate decisions?
The concept of decision evaluation changed during the competition. As a result, we decided not to use the approaches of previous years.
This year it was decided to make a tripartite assessment:
- The decision was evaluated by mentors - people who know the teams better than anyone else. Mentors looked at whether the problem was solved or not, and also made a verdict on the functionality of the prototype;
- For their part, the proposed options were also evaluated by experts who were with the teams on the final Sunday. They checked the technological solution - the quality of the code, the use of frameworks, etc. Of course, we did not seek to evaluate the presence of unit tests or super-high-quality written code, since this is a hackathon, and the result is more valued here than beautifully written, but not working code;
- And, in the final, the jury looked at two final criteria: ergonomics and design, as well as the quality of the pitch.
All scores were entered into an application specially created by our department, into which we “sewn up” all the mathematics according to the weights of the criteria, who puts down these criteria, etc.
The final
Out of 27 teams that worked on the site, 24 reached the finals.
The jury included not only representatives of Rosbank, but also representatives of other Societe Generale Russia companies: Rusfinance Bank, Rosbank Insurance, ALD Automotive.
Сonclusion
The event turned out, without undue modesty, cool and very productive. We got cool solutions, and the participants who took the first three places received cash prizes: three hundred, two hundred and one hundred thousand rubles for the first, second and third places, respectively. Well, all the rest are pleasant emotions and experience, which will undoubtedly be useful to them.
More about the teams that won prizes:
- The first place and 300 rubles went to the Drop Table Users team, which came up with a way to identify a client online when issuing a car loan. To verify his identity, he must submit his video with a passport in his hand and follow a unique sequence of actions;
- Second place and a prize of 200 thousand rubles went to OilStone. The team presented a project to promote a mobile application for business through a game, where the user must act as an entrepreneur and manage the company for points and prizes;
- The third place and a prize of 100 thousand rubles went to the team of the Java gentlemen. The participants figured out how to display the history of operations in a mobile application, proposing a prototype of a platform in which data is displayed in an exciting way, for example, in the form of stories with graphs and analysis of the user's financial activity.
It is too early to talk about which solutions and in what form will be implemented in the bank, this is a topic for a separate article in the future. We will do the first cut of the results in a couple of months.
Nevertheless, at least a few solutions proposed as part of this hackathon will definitely be included in the product backlog of the digital teams of Rosbank and Rusfinance Bank.
Source: habr.com