March 14, 2015 was an important day for us. We celebrated first Innofied Hackathon that day. It was a day full of activities, fun and, food of course!

To start with, here is the background story. We do not see much of code marathon or similar events in Kolkata. Code marathon or Hackathon, whatever you call it, helps to improve the innovation quotient of an organization. Plus, it helps people to understand the value of time, importance of team work and how to work in synergy.

So, we wanted to get a feel of real life hackathon and came up with the idea of organizing Innofied Hackathon exclusive for existing and former members of Innofied team. With the learnings from this hackathon, we could think of organizing a larger event at city or state level.

This event was somewhat different from those where groups of crazy developers lock themselves inside hotel banquet room or large warehouse at a tech conference, brainstorm, pitch, execute, face the juries and network. Our Hackathon took place at our Kolkata office. We did not have any external guests either. Still, 18 members sacrificed India vs. Zimbabwe World Cup Match and came to office on weekend to accept a challenge, to do something new, to respond to their quest for creativity.

We had a simple problem statement. Participants had to come up with a mobile app or web app for any of the seven categories:

1. Child Education
2. Fitness
3. Women’s Safety
4. Environment
5. One-page Game
6. Utility
7. Social Cause

Team members came up with their own product ideas, formed their own teams, and worked really hard to execute their plan. The event started at 9 AM; and all teams submitted a testable product before 9 PM.

Let’s take a look at the apps we created:

Foodobi

This app provides bunch of international recipes which are quite popular in different parts of the world. The presentation style is very simple. If you are confused on what to have in lunch / dinner this app can come useful. Browse the recipes, select one from the list, and get started.

Along with the origin of the food, it also shows estimated time required to prepare the item and calorie content.

HelpInHand

This app bridges the gap between the common man who want to help the society and NGOs which are looking for contributions in order to help those who need it.

There is a dashboard; people can post what they have to donate and NGOs can post what they need. Messages posted on the wall become visible to all so that others can comment, connect and take it forward.

The team plans to have different sections in the app to classify discussions on donation of money, donation of food/clothes during natural calamities; there can be a dedicated section for animals etc.

ErrorAware

This is a web application which when connected renders customized error pages. It covers common errors: 404 (not found), 403 (restricted) and 500 (internal server error). Instead of the conventional error handling pages, it renders templates with the aim of creating awareness about some of the prevalent social issues. The social issues that it covers are relevant to the technical meaning of these errors. Some of the social issues are:

• Missing person information
• Endangered species awareness
• Save energy campaign
• Women Empowerment
• Drinking and Driving
• Anti Smoking

The objective is to emphasize on the severity of these social issues by creating/increasing general awareness. This product provides a means for websites to contribute to various social causes without affecting their intended functionalities.

FitnessPro

FitnessPro is a ‘running’ app which records the distance, speed and time of your fitness run. You can select a target distance and view the distance ran, distance remaining, average speed and elapsed time during the run. It also shows your location on a map and tracks the path that you’ve run. The history of previous runs can also be viewed.

PicMe

This is a photograph competition app where one can upload his best picture and monthly winners will be selected upon the uploaded pictures and will be shown in the “Winners” page. In the “Gallery” everyone can see the pictures uploaded month wise and the user can upload the image from “Camera” page.

On top of that, we had plenty of fun and unlimited good food!

Then a group of evaluators critically reviewed all the products and gave their verdict. And FitnessPro was selected as the winner. Announcing the winner is a formality and it’s a part of any contest. In reality, people with the spirit of accepting a challenge, people with the willpower to do something different are the actual winners. In that sense, all who participated won the contest unconditionally.

Hats off to Innofied team for such a great work; we can now go for a larger event at city or state level.