Budapest, April 26, 2017 10:30

Magyar Telekom and Kitchen Budapest (KiBu) announce a new 24 hours developer competition (Hackathon) on the theme of Big Data. Inspired by the success of last year’s Hackathon the organizers are looking for creative Big Data project ideas for the purpose of a long-term cooperation. The 24 hours competition will start at 5.00 p.m. on May 12 in MOSAIK.

The organizers expect applications from creative developers, artists, designers and business oriented persons who are ready to work in a team and can create something great from Telekom’s anonymized database. Applicants can submit their ideas in two categories: Data Representation and Data Powered Apps. The first prize in each category is HUF 500,000 plus the audience can award a team with HUF 100,000. For more details and to submit applications, please visit http://bigdata.kibu.hu/

The objective of the organizer, Magyar Telekom, is to find ideas with business potential and the company plans to further cooperate with the winners to elaborate and implement their ideas. For example, the winners of the 2016 Hackathon could present their ideas to Magyar Telekom’s senior management. The company started to cooperate with the “Déta” and “Dynamic Duo” teams and they were given the opportunity to realize their ideas in a live environment.

The winner of the 2016 Hackathon’s Data Visualization category, the 4-member Déta team, prepared an outstanding model with a map interface that helps to pinpoint the best locations to open a shop. The user interface shows where the target group is located and the geographical location of shops which are easily accessible for the specific target group. The team was also given the special award for “the most creative involvement of additional data sources”. They gave account on last year’s event as follows: “The fact that Telekom really uses our work and the top management is interested in our ideas was a strong motivation factor. We worked with real data and implemented our own ideas which was a great starting point. It was also useful that we could count on the help of KiBu and Telekom employees. After the hackathon we stayed in touch with KiBu and Telekom so that our cooperation may transform our idea into a live project.

“The specialty of the Telekom Hackathon is that all teams work from the same data set and it is only up to our creativity what solution is realized at the end. This is a great challenge and opportunity to meet people with whom we share similar interests. Many things have happened to us since the Hackathon; we presented the project to Telekom’s senior management then we could realize our idea in a live environment. The key of our successful cooperation was learning from and getting to know each other and this is where KiBu helped a lot. KiBu is the mediator, providing professional advice and helping our work with tools. We do appreciate the Telekom - KiBu initiative to gather innovative ideas that support the company’s development and we hope that based on the experience of the previous Hackathon the next event will give the participants an even better time” - said the Dynamic Duo, winner of the 2016 Hackathon’s “ Data based apps” category. The team created a solution for Telekom to avoid contacting their customers with marketing offers at inconvenient times. The application shows whether it is convenient to call the given customer with the help of a color code.