Big Data for Business Hackathon: Start Your Tech Startup

We invite developers, analysts, marketers, designers, product managers and business angels to the hackathon Big Data for Business - a two-day team competition in the development of software products that solve business problems through data analysis. Hackathon will be held November 18-19 in Kazan IT Park. The event is sponsored by EMC and Brocade. Partners - Textocat, DGL, Provectus and Business Incubator of the IT Park Kazan. The prize fund is 150,000 rubles.

By participating in the Big Data for Business hackathon, you can:

• find a team of like-minded people
• come up with a cool business idea, implement and improve it with leading experts,
• get a confession
• win valuable prizes
• learn from the experience in the field of technology and the principles of product packaging,
• take the first step towards your startup based on data analysis technologies
• meet promising product teams in Big Data.

Next, we will talk about the key features of our event.

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Playground

Kazan IT Park is a famous futuristic building in the center of Kazan and a real center of attraction for IT specialists from the whole Volga region. This is a very comfortable place for creative work.

Format

Hackathon will be held in the daytime for two days. Note that on the night of November 18-19, the hackathon playground will be closed. The hackathon program includes pitching of ideas, implementation of projects, assistance from trainers on the site, protection of projects in front of well-known experts in the jury and, of course, catering (excellent lunches, coffee breaks, drinks and snacks). The organizers pay special attention to the quality of the Internet connection: high-speed Wi-Fi will be available, as well as an Internet connection via cable.

A hackathon is a team competition (although it is not prohibited to participate alone). You can come to the hackathon with ready-made teams, or you can form a team at the event itself: attracting people with your interesting project idea during pitching or joining a project you like along the way.

As usual, the goal of the team working on the hackathon is to implement and submit a prototype of a software product. The main topic of the Big Data for Business hackathon is data analysis, including big data (Big Data). Another feature of this hackathon is the requirement of commercial attractiveness of the project. This means that the teams will have to protect the project during the presentation by answering such typical questions: who is the target audience (market) of the product? What is the size of the market? who are the competitors? your competitive advantage? How do you plan to develop the project? What resources are needed for project development? The target audience of projects is not limited to the business-to-business (B2B) sphere. Products designed for other types of markets are also accepted: business-to-customer (B2C), business-to-government (B2G), etc.

Thus, the Big Data for Business hackathon will be of interest to different groups of professionals: it is important not only to implement the product, but also to “pack” it correctly.

For investors at an early stage, the hackathon Big Data for Business provides an excellent opportunity to view promising teams in one of the most trending areas of investment in IT.

Project Criteria

The jury decides on the quality of projects based on the following criteria:

• completeness of the project,
• manufacturability and scalability,
• the importance of the problem being solved,
• market potential for a product
• design,
• novelty,

as well as personal subjective assessments and experience.

Jury

The jury consisted of well-known experts with extensive experience in both data analysis technologies and product management:

• Sergey Zolotarev, Director of Pivotal in Russia
• Konstantin Savenkov, Bookmate COO
• Lenar Khalikov, Director of the IT Park Business Incubator
• Airat Hasyanov, Director of the Higher School ITIS KFU
• Bulat Karimov, head of Mediametrics development.

Trainers

Teams will help independent coaches:

• Grigory Sapunov - ex-leader of the development of the Yandex.News service, a well-known specialist in the field of Big Data and applied machine learning (in particular, deep learning)
• Nikita Zhiltsov - director of technology and data scientist at Textocat, a specialist in information retrieval and applied machine learning
• Rinat Gareev is the general manager and data scientist of Textocat, a specialist in the field of natural language processing and applied machine learning.

Coaches assist teams both in implementation (in technology) and in preparing presentations (at the “packaging” stage of the product).

Prizes

The prize fund is 150 000 rubles. Team members receive prizes in the form of electronics and gadgets for winning in the following main categories (based on the decision of the jury):

• Best Service / API
• The best user interface application.

Separate prizes will be received by the team awarded by all participants of the hackathon (“audience award”).

How to prepare?

You can: read the list of frequently asked questions , the list of recommended resources , as well as add a description of your project on a special page and start building a team now.

Nonresident participants, we advise to book in advance a place in the hotel or hostel.

How to participate?

Register on the hackathon website , participate in discussions in our VKontakte group and invite colleagues. See you in Kazan!