By Naomi Parris

JUST halfway through the gruelling 72 hours of programming and building a software application, several participants of this year’s Hackathon are confident they will cop this year’s top prize.
Speaking with the Guyana Chronicle on Sunday at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre (ACCC) where the competition is being held, Shamar Berkley of ‘Team Control Art Elite’ said that while the competition has been tiring, he is confident in himself and team members. “This competition has been very tiring; I only had less than two hours of sleep this morning, but we got a good way and I feel very inspired. “Honestly, it’s undone, because you don’t know what the others are doing. But we planned, and we did our best, so I do feel a little confident,” Berkley said.
Meanwhile, Matthew Ramlall of ‘Team Skillshare’ said he and his team have been experiencing some difficulty, since it’s their first time competing in Hackathon. But while they are in uncharted territory, the team is still vying for the top prize, and is hoping to gain some new experiences along the way.

“We are first timers. We have been having some difficulties; some ups and downs, which is expected, but we are hoping to take a spot. It is a good experience and, hopefully, next year we can do better, providing that [we will have some more experience].” Meanwhile, ‘Team Logic’, which placed second last year, is confident of their skills. At the time of the interview, Diante Callender, a member of the team, said they were right on schedule with their application. “Team Logic, we are right on schedule with the application we want to develop; we are just trying to make sure that everything works for the presentation on Monday. And hopefully, all the rest of teams are just as ready as us, because we are expecting a lot of competition this year, given the competition we had last year,” Callender said. Shamiza Balnacoon, a web designer and teacher of ‘Team Orbitan’, stated that she, too, is confident in her team’s ability. She described this year’s Hackathon as interesting, given the fact that participants have to a create software that will help digitise Guyana’s education system.

She is looking forward to seeing the outcome of this year’s competition, especially given the short amount of time that was given to create a software application. “I was very intrigued by the topic, and I think that I can actually represent teachers around the country,” Balnacoon said. “So, for me, the competition has been interesting so far. There is a lot that we need to implement in a short amount of time.”The goal of this year’s Hackathon is to create a functioning software application by the end of the event, which commenced on December 5, and is slated to conclude on Monday. Participants are tasked with creating a functional student record information system that can be used by the Ministry of Education to digitise the registration system throughout schools across the country. The winning team will receive a cash prize of G$500,000, while the second and third place teams will collect G$350,000 and G$250,000 respectively.