The first hackathon Skyeng: 15 working projects in two days

In late September, we conducted our first hackathon for employees. Within two days, our developers, designers, products and analysts, having broken up into small teams, diligently coded, and eventually ended up with fifteen projects to the state of MVP. We tell how it was.

The idea was in the air for a long time. First of all, a hackathon is a great way to conceive and implement a dozen or two projects for which there is simply no time for normal operation. Secondly, many of us work remotely, so a hackathon is an opportunity to finally (often for the first time) see colleagues with whom you communicate, live every day. And finally, we were able to implement this idea.

The theme of the hackathon is education. You could do anything: a web project, a mobile application, a bot, etc., and the binding to Skyeng was not mandatory. Developers, analysts, designers, products were invited; all paid for the road and accommodation. The guys had to break up into teams of 2-4 people, it is desirable that these people represent different divisions of the company.
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To save time and improve results, we decided to collect ideas and teams in advance. From the beginning of September, projects and participants were entered into a special tablet in Google Docs ( copy ), and the authors of the ideas actively “sold” to their colleagues in Slack.



There was also a small prize fund (hakaton something internal) - 30, 20 and 10 thousand rubles for the first three places.

We managed to start looking for a place to hold the hackathon a little more than two weeks before the event - never do that. Yes, our organizers got experience for level 80, but it was very nervous. The fact is that the platform for the hackathon is not just "some" conference center or hotel. Among the mandatory requirements (collected, including by interviewing our employees who participated in other hackathons) are the presence of separate zones, the ability to work at night, a large number of extension sockets, round-the-clock access to coffee tea and buns, and so on.

As a result, two suitable sites were found - one in Moscow, the second near Chekhov. Moscow had obvious advantages - no need to go anywhere, no problems with the organization of evening activities, in the end, if it is uncomfortable in the main hall, you can always go to code in the nearest tavern. The drawbacks are also obvious: there is little space, you can always go to code in the nearest tavern, instead of doing team building. Chekhov's version imposed transport difficulties, but offered clean air, a lot of space, an unusual environment and a bath; him and chose.





For two days, almost 50 people coded, steamed in a bath, went in for sports, ran drones, went to the farm and worried about the electricity that had turned off in the whole area, and on the third they gathered in the Moscow office and finally saw what we did. We present 15 projects.

Skyeng music

An iPhone player that works with your Apple Music collection and displays lyrics on the screen. With the text, you can do the usual operations for the student school - watch the translation of words, add them to your dictionary. A free version of the Musixmatch lyrics API is used, so there is no karaoke here.

Skyeng tweets

www.messenger.com/t/skyengtweets
A bot for Facebook, issuing several fresh popular tweets that contain a word just added by a student to his dictionary (you need to link a Skeyng account using a token sent by mail). Unobtrusive tool for memorizing words in context.

Skyeng reader

An iPhone application that works with any browser, opening articles from sites in a separate window, where you can already get translations of words and add them to your dictionary. It works similar to our Chrome extension, only with simpler algorithms; Soon it will be built into the usual words application.

Skeyng social

We see in our students the need for additional communication among themselves in English: Skyeng conversational clubs occur on a schedule once a week, and also require investment from our side. This project is a prototype of a social network for Skyeng students, where they can pick up interlocutors to suit their level and their interests. In order to communicate only in English, all messages are voiced by "Google"; participants see only the test that they write themselves.

Chat roulette

Another solution to the problem of insufficient communication between students is a chat roulette with video available to our students immediately after the hackathon. For the chat, random interlocutors of approximately the same age, one level of language knowledge and similar interests are selected. There is no teacher here, this is not a complete replacement for a talk club, but a good opportunity to practice a little. And if the interlocutor categorically does not like - it can be banned for several hours.

InstaPoll

play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=en.skyeng.poll.poll
instapolly.herokuapp.com
Application for quick surveys. Useful for conferences, seminars or group lessons when it is necessary to arrange a vote without unnecessary labor and technical costs. With it, a vote was taken for the best projects of the hackathon.

Yesno

yesno.gq
Another application for group activities. Participants are divided into two teams, after which they answer a series of questions. In our case, there were 20 questions, they were English phrases, it was necessary to determine if there were any mistakes in them or not. The correct answers are counted in the asset of each team, the result can be observed in real time.

Haiku app

haikuthon.herokuapp.com
The application in which you need to collect Japanese haiku from English words. The requirements are simple: the first line - 5 syllables, the second - 7, the third - again 5, rhyme and meaning are optional. The benefits of this simple project in two things: first, the student learns the correct pronunciation and number of syllables in English words (it is not obvious to everyone, for example, that chocolate has two syllables). Secondly, mnemonic connections are involved here: collecting new, funny and unexpected combinations, the student memorizes the words he learns faster. However, the hackathon version does not have the ability to connect its own dictionary.

Skyeng black mama

www.facebook.com/BigBlackmammy
telegram.me/bigblackmamabot
Chatbook on the Sequel platform, allowing you to complete small quests to understand spoken English. As the "bait" used variants of unusual pronunciations - specifically the title of African American and Indian support services; the player must understand what they are talking about. The Indians have something broken at the last moment, so only “Mommy” can fully pass. In principle, this is a finished product for creating small gaming homework for our lessons.

Hackaton action

A 3D action game written in two days on Unity, with which no one was familiar before. The basic idea is to allow the user to download his new video card, while memorizing English words. The toy is a labyrinth with cheater gates, through which to run faster, but you need to correctly translate the word. There are two players who first reach the finish line - he won.

Game of Thoughts

188.166.160.151
The clicker toy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incremental_game) with a very basic thematic link to the Game of Thrones. Correctly translated words give crystals used for upgrades. Just do not ask how Ned Stark turns out of a million Khodorov, we do not know. And be careful: like all clickers, the thing is addictive.

guess the word

vimbox.skyeng.ru/speech-game/start

The quiz is fully consistent with its name: the student is shown a picture and an English dictionary definition, he needs to guess and say the hidden word. You can choose a category and your level of knowledge of the language. The player has four tips: the first letter, the translation into Russian, the word in English, the pronunciation of the word in English (here it is enough to simply repeat what was heard). Tips reduce the number of prize points, the task of the quiz is to score as many as possible in 10 words.

Build Words

An iPhone game about building houses, where each floor is a properly translated word. You can play solo or together. In single mode, the height of the house is limited only by your knowledge, the roof at some point is in space and continues to grow - the developers promise there are different surprises. When playing together, the task is to give more correct answers than the opponent, and make it faster.

iBroken Phone

ibrokenphone.online
The idea of ​​the “Broken Phone” game is to repeat the phrase, transfer your entry to the next participant, who will try to understand and repeat it himself, and so on until the end of the ten-party chain. Phrases are taken from the cinema, the last phrase is superimposed on the episode of the film, it turns out fun. It’s not very possible to create enough chains during the hackathon, so a demo version is launched, where all the voice acting is immediately visible - you can try to speak in the voice of Gandalf or the Godfather. Send your voice to the next one too.

ChatOPS

The project does not fall into the topic hackathon, but was made on it. Internal slak-bot, with which you can find a free test server, find out where everything is installed, ping a colleague who takes testing for too long and book a time. We hope that it will greatly simplify and accelerate internal communications.



According to the results of the vote, the clicker won by a large margin, the second place was taken by the roulette, the third - Skyeng Music.


What will happen to this next? Some of these projects have already become part of our ecosystem and are available to students of the school. Others are brought to release versions. Still others are built into existing products. Well, of course, for the time being, something will remain in the form of a proof of concept, in order to be used (perhaps unexpectedly) sometime later. But we are very satisfied - to be honest, we ourselves did not expect such meaningful results. If initially it was planned to make such internal hakatons annual, now the option to gather more often is being considered.

Want to be with us on the next hackathon? Join the team! Now we are actively looking for developers PHP and AngularJS , for each job for a few people, we really need a lot of people and we will be happy for everyone!