In terms of participation of some 1,675 mobile application developers, the organisers claimed that a two-day first mobile hackathon in the country as well as the biggest of its kind in the world has started in the capital yesterday.
The hackathon, also known as hack day or codefest, was inaugurated at the Institute of Diploma Engineers in Kakrail around 9:30am, where young programmers, freelancers, students and mobile application developers flocked together to make mobile apps on ten problems that are most common in the country.
The problems are question paper leakage, corruption, sexual harassment, traffic jam, security on the highways, sanitation, water transport safety, cyclone centre management, reproductive health and personal health problems.
Inaugurating the programme, State Minister for ICT Division Zunaid Ahmed Palak termed it the biggest mobile hackathon in the globe, saying:“We have been engrossing in traffic jam, question paper leakage, corruption and so on. Should we search problem only? No, these youths will solve the problems.”
He also stated:“This is the biggest mobile application hackathon in the globe so far.”
One of the co-organisers namely Ashraf Abir echoed the claim of the state minister, telling there were around 1,205 participants in a mobile hackathon held several years ago in the country.
Ashraf continued that:“The debate should not be on weather it is the biggest hackathon or not. We need to concentrate on adding apps developers through such sort of event and the solution of the problems facing by them.”
The participants were divided into 288 teams, each of which include five members, comprising both coders and designers, who can generate their idea by using any platform of Android, IOS and FireFox OS and will place their solution paper by today noon.
Around 49 professional companies also took part in the competition while 30 IT specialists and programmers were supposed to evaluate the papers.
The winning team will be awarded with Tk20 lakh of innovation fund to materialise their project.
Besides, the winners will receive several prizes from Microsoft Mobile, Symphony, Robi and Grameenphone.