Reflecting on Hackathon 2016
The five core members of V75 (All photos courtesy of Eldon Marks)
The five core members of V75 (All photos courtesy of Eldon Marks)

The winning V75 team
By Gibron Rahim
INFORMATION and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are the way of the future. ICT professionals can use their skills to develop solutions to complex problems we face today, right here in Guyana. It is not surprising then that events such as the Ministry of Public Telecommunications’ Hackathon are so crucial. The experience of last year’s winning Hackathon team establishes a solid case for a greater focus on Information Technology (IT) in Guyana.

Hackathon 2017 which opened on Friday at the Guyana Pegasus Hotel ends today. Last year’s inaugural Hackathon saw Team V75 triumph over their fellow teams to win the cash prize of $300 000. The event was a part of the Ministry of Public Telecommunications fulfilling its mandate to create an enabling environment for the growth of ICT. At Hackathon 2017, teams of two to five ICT-skilled professionals were required to resolve identified social and economic problems in Guyana through the creation of IT applications.
The event was set to run for 48 consecutive hours during which all team members needed to participate. At least one person had to be working on the application at any given time and all team members could not take a break at the same time. A new rule was also introduced for Hackathon 2017 – submissions could not contain material that promoted discrimination based on race, gender, religion, nationality, disability, sexual orientation or age.

Team V75 described Hackathon 2016 as having been a rewarding experience. The Pepperpot Magazine contacted Team Leader, Eldon Marks who was able to tell of his and his team’s experience during the event. He noted that the event was one that had been long overdue. Guyana, he said, has many groups of ‘techpreneurs’ and freelancers who had no real public outlet to exhibit their skillset and receive recognition and encouragement prior to Hackathon. “It is important to celebrate local talent in this industry in particular since IT has been identified as a major driver for economic development in our third-world country,” Marks said.

Marks and his fellow team members enjoyed every moment of the competition. He described how they felt no tension or anxiety although they were in competition. He attributed this confidence to their great team dynamic and the humility of his teammates. “Just having the opportunity to work together to build a nationally relevant product with no expectations made the experience a fun and enjoyable one,” he explained. One of the greatest challenges during the competition, he humourously noted, was finding somewhere to nap.

The team chose Challenge IV from the list of challenges they were presented with. The challenge was captioned “Effective Incident Reporting” and tasked them with creating an application to facilitate the reporting of incidents to the appropriate agency. The app they came up with – ‘Tell’ – was able to do just that.

The ‘Tell’ cycle

Team V75 was directly formed from V75 or Version 75 Solutions. V75, as Marks described, is a software community disguised as a company. It was formed on January 2, 2014. They prioritise collaboration over competition and are big on social impact through innovation. He explained that, when they are not working on solutions for their clients, V75 devotes their time to pro-bono development, digital entrepreneurship support activities and offering free programming courses through their V75 Young Developers Group and weOwn space.
The V75 network comprises over 30 individuals, with five core members. Four of these core members were able to participate in Hackathon 2016, due to the team member limit only. Those members were Eldon Marks (team leader), Ashim Badrie, Shemar Lindie and Asa Brouet. “We proudly state that all core members of V75 are products of the Department of Computer Science, University of Guyana.” Version 75 Solutions are firm believers of entrepreneurship in software development in Guyana. Marks observed that Hackathon is an event that proves that there is a future for software development here. “Our gifted community members also confirm this potential by delivering quality software solutions to many clients both home and abroad,” he said. He also noted that, based on the observed demand, more local enterprises are becoming more aware of the necessity of ICTs to optimise business operations.

The key to nurturing such endeavours lies in creating the environment for them. Such deliberate environments Marks said would give the naturally gifted human capital in Guyana an opportunity to discover and develop their true potential. “Such environments are not unlike the one created for our 48-hour Hackathon which gave various professionals a place to gather, collaborate, network and produce,” he said.
Marks explained that V75 has been fortunate to find a relatively new ‘environment’ which seeks to offer great promise for Guyana’s entrepreneurs in the same vein as Hackathon. That environment in question is weOwn space, a shared office space located in South Ruimveldt Gardens. He observed that quite a few techpreneurs are members of weOwn space.
Hackathon 2016 was generally well planned out and executed, and according to Marks. V75 had only one major recommendation to improve future competitions – giving more scope for innovation. Team V75 made the strategic decision to focus on delivering on functionality due to the time allotted. “However, if we were provided with a designated period for delivering on the concept, this would allow developers the room for more creative thinking,” he said. He put forward the thought that perhaps in the future an ‘Ideathon’ could be held that focuses on the formulation of conceptual solutions before the hackathon. The outputs of the ‘Ideathon’ could then be fed into the Hackathon competition.

Undoubtedly, Hackathon 2017 will have improved on Hackathon 2016 and will continue to get better as the years go by. It is undeniable that Guyana’s ICT professionals are capable of finding solutions to problems placed before them. This can be nourished by providing the necessary educational opportunities to develop these skills. Marks acknowledged that the Department of Computer Science at the University of Guyana has made a step in this direction by recently revamping its academic programmes, and now offering degrees in IT, Information Systems and Computer Science.

Even more, though, Marks and V75 believe that we should not wait until the tertiary level to begin the journey of software development. “This should be done at an early age, at the beginning of the secondary level, because there are a lot of young brilliant minds out there who would find it much fun and interesting to create an application.”
Those who are interested in contacting Version 75 Solutions as well as seeing some of the work they have done can do so at http://version75.com/

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