Organised by Classified Post, in association with Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks, the contestants, undergraduates and recent graduates from a wide range of disciplines, were tasked with building their apps and digital solutions by utilising the application programming interfaces (APIs) of participating companies hosted at the HKSTP data studio. AIA and the South China Morning Post (SCMP) were the event’s premium partners.
Working overnight, the competing teams received their project briefing, with an industrial sector assigned for which they would develop their solutions, started their brainstorming, worked on the data analytics, developed coding, designed, constructed, tested and refined their prototypes, and completed the presentations, all within 24 hours. “Social listening” was the main focus and many teams proposed leveraging analytics of data collected on various social media platforms to gauge social sentiments and real-time trends more accurately in their development of digital solutions meeting the current requirements of companies in the digital media and insurance sectors.
Albert Wong, CEO of HKSTP and a member of the judging panel, congratulated the contestants on their performances and remarked that the Hackathon was an important learning experience.
“You should participate in other hackathons, applying what you have learned and putting all your passion into it,” he said. “You are young and, regardless of the results, this is a great time for you to learn and try your best. HKSTP welcomes the project prototypes presented at this hackathon so feel free to contact us for future cooperation.”
He also highlighted the importance of data.“Data is the future. It’s all about artificial intelligence,” Wong noted. “This is more than just coding. Analytics of data can generate important insights. At HKSTP, we have seen rapid developments in such areas as AI and biomedical. Professor Dennis Lo, a biomedical expert, has said that he needed more data analysts for future business development.”
Echoing Wong’s notion was Man Kit Lee, assistant director, digital business development at the SCMP. “I have seen passion, focus and dedication among the contestants,” said Lee. “Yesterday, I answered some high-quality questions from the contestants at the briefing. It made me feel like I was talking to professionals. It showed that you had done in-depth research and developed a thorough understanding of the subject matter.”
During his post-hackathon summing up remarks, Mark Seifried, chief technology officer at AIA and one of the judges, said he was impressed by the way participating teams had compressed their project proposals into a three-minute presentation. “The talent and energy demonstrated certainly raised the wow factor,” said Seifried who added that credit should be given to Classified Post as the organiser and Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks as a support partner. Seifried said that AIA, as the main sponsor of the Hackathon and a committed member of the Hong Kong community, was pleased to give something back to the youth of Hong Kong in the form of valuable experiences and the opportunity to work on purpose-driven ideas. “It was a great 24 hours,” said Seifried.
Commenting on the works by the contestants, Andrew Chan, the SCMP’s digital media analyst, thought the overall quality of the solutions was great. “All of the contestants showed a strong understanding of the issues and some of them provided concrete solutions with outstanding technical skills and data visualisation techniques. However, some teams did not have sufficient time for their presentations. The teams needed to improve on their time management skills,” Chan noted. “As for the champion team in the media category – blangladash – it won because it presented a functional prototype that could already be beneficial to the newsroom.”
Annie Cheung, general manager of Peoplebank, one of the event partners, said the participants not only focused on the idea and presentation content, but some teams demonstrated profound knowledge of their respective sectors and took into consideration customer experience to ensure user-friendliness, stability and efficiency.
“From a judge’s perspective, it would have been good to see a more personal perspective of the contestants to gain a more complete view of the project. For example, it would have been even better to understand each participant’s responsibility and involvement, as well as the challenges they faced.”
Each team in the media and insurance categories had three minutes in the first round of presentations to show the judges the creativity and feasibility of their solutions. In the final round, five teams in each category were shortlisted and they spent up to 10 minutes explaining the unique features of their digital solutions. The presentation was followed by a five-minute Q&A session.
All the contestants were fuelled by a passion for innovation and cutting-edge digital tools that would make our life much easier and enjoyable. In the media category, the champion was Team blangadash, first runner-up was Team MAJEC and second runner-up Team Nascent. Team blangadash proposed a comprehensive newsroom solution that included recommendations for headlines to attract online readers. Team member Siddhartha Datta thought the main challenge in this hackathon was selling the idea correctly because all teams had similar ideas. “We needed to distinguish our solutions by packaging them differently, as well as telling the story right so that the judges would buy our ideas,” Datta noted.
“Because the team was made up of students of different disciplines, we all appreciated our differences because they led to some very constructive discussions.”
Cary Law of Team MAJEC said the time constraint was the biggest challenge for his team. “This required meticulous division of labour,” said Law. “Our tech guy solved the problems initially while the others helped with testing and fine-tuning the solutions to finalise them. I have taken part in other hackathons before and this one is more interesting and challenging.”
Peony Cheng of Team Nascent believed the further development of her team’s prototype solutions would lead to more practical functions that could help editors reduce their workload. “For example, the solutions could help them give headlines and select images to illustrate stories,” she said. “The solutions are designed to improve production efficiency.”
In the insurance category, the champion was Team SIMPLAI, first runner-up was Team WildPointer and second runner-up Amarock Consulting LLP.
Team SIMPLAI’s solutions recommended chatbot automated insurance advisors and using data analytics to increase customer acquisition. Team member Jason Wong said he had been driven by his curiosity to see the practical applications of such technologies as AI and big data.
“We’d like to know how our technology recommendations can help companies diversify their business strategies and sharpen their competitive edge,” said Wong.
His team mate Jason Tse agreed. “At school we learned about coding only and not much about practical application. This hackathon is an exciting opportunity for us to harness specialised knowledge to develop innovative solutions for large companies like AIA.”
Chen Cheng of Team WildPointer said it was a rewarding experience that the team learned to develop ideas quickly, and then to rigorously test the solutions for the feasibility and further fine-tune the ideas. All these steps were accomplished within a short time.
“Our presentation in the first round was not so satisfactory,” Chen said. “For the final round, we practised a lot and thought about the ideas and flow carefully and did much better.”
Vincent Lok Wing San of Amarock Consulting LLP said future contestants for the Hackathon should pay more attention to the latest developments of data science. “If they study computer science, in their spare time they can further enrich their knowledge by studying reference textbooks available online which provide guidance on ways to process data,” Lok noted.
