*Representational picture courtesy-bitmesra.ac.in

Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra, Ranchi, has introduced HACK-A-BIT for all programmers involving software development to collaborate intensively on software projects. The first-ever hackathon, Hack-A-BIT is scheduled from October 26 to conclude on October 28, 2018.

In all, 54 teams from more than 20 colleges have been selected for the on-site round from an initial 413 teams (1200 + participants). The teams were selected after three rounds of online screening based on the ideas submitted, its novelty, its importance in the present world and the CV of the members of the participating teams.

The final project that is planned to be developed within 36 hours by the teams in the Grand Finale will be judged by a panel of highly skilled individuals. The 5 judges for the finals include Durga Raju, founder of ITVersity LLC, through which he has trained thousands of students in big data and related tools like Hadoop and Spark. He trained himself in the fields of database and big data which enabled him to move through an array of roles in those domains, including a stint at IBM as a database architect. He has had 14 years of IT experience for clients like IBM, Walmart, Citi, AT&T and ERCOT, and also specializes in Application Development, Big Data, Cloud and DevOps, and Data Warehousing.

The second judge is Kaushik MLN who is currently the Head of Engineering at ITVersity, a digital learning platform created by none other than our first panelist, Mr. Gadiraju. He is the co-founder of Zup, a Digital Payments startup, and Z2P, which is a mobile-based P2P lending startup. He is also the co-founder of RuddBuddy. Mr. Kaushik specializes in Web and Mobile Application Development and Big Data.

The third panelist is Pratyush Agarwal who is the co-founder of CodeAsylums, aims to help students crack technical interviews and help them develop products using the latest technologies and practices in the software industry. He is an experienced freelancer and has also worked in companies like DE Shaw. He specializes in the domain of BigData, Blockchain, and FinTech, which can surely help the participants trying to deploy their projects using these technologies.

Kushagra Singh and Abhishek from InfoTech Hub complete the judging panel as fourth and fifty judges. With good experience of hackathons and a great knowledge about the current technological advancements in the world, the two surely add a great amount of experience in the judging panel.

To put in place a considerable sum of prizes and incentives as part of the hackathon, it has rewards in store for all its entrants, the release said.

The team securing the top-notch spot in this technical extravaganza has been allocated a whopping cash prize of Rs 25,000, while the 1st and 2nd runners-up will receive cash prizes of Rs 15,000 and Rs 10,000 respectively, along with goodies from team HACK-A-BIT which include wireless headphones, fitness bands, power banks, and pen drives.

The winners will also receive goodies from Ubisoft, Zebronics, and TopCoder.

Every contender qualifying for the Finale will receive Free credits from Digital Oceans, while the top 15 teams will get premium coupons from Jetbrains and Balsamiq. To add on to it, Zebronics will be providing goodies worth INR 10,000 and $1,000 credits will be presented by Bugsee.

The best hack on ‘tech domains’ will receive $150 cash while the best bot using Zulip API will get $100 cash. Also, the best app on Hasura Graphql Engine will be presented with Amazon Gift Coupons worth INR 5,000.

Having a hand in creating usable software to generate a functioning product, purveys the participants to win online credits and Cloud facilities worth $20,000 and $15,000 respectively.

Amazon Web Credits worth $10,000 will be provided to the top 50 teams, while Winkies will be presenting gift hampers to the participants.

This 36 hours long hackathon holds out ‘Swag Bags’, comprising  official HACK-A-BIT t-shirts, stickers, bands and laptop skin for all the contenders

A separate cash prize of INR 5,000 will be awarded to the best all-girls team and to the team with the best hardware hack. Cash prizes will also be rewarded to the teams who solve the ‘Hoolah’ challenge.

With a total of 54 teams from more than 20 colleges competing for cash prizes and goodies, this technical activity is all set to come up with novel ideas that stand out and possibly, can disrupt current industry standards.

 

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