From 8 to 10 October 2020, 130 development experts from all over the world registered for the 5th edition of Game of Code, a Luxembourgish hackathon organised by Farvest, which was held exclusively online this year.
The event ran smoothly thanks to the technical partners' tools and platforms and the sponsors of Game of Code who challenged the participants on the topics of Open Banking, Open Data and social inclusion, as well as focussing on the current issues arising from the COVID-19 crisis, with the "Hack the Future" challenge.
Philippe Linster, CEO of House of Startups Luxembourg, welcomed the coders and partners for the 36-hour hackathon. He then handed the microphone to Kamel Amroune, CEO of Farvest Group, who officially opened the 5th edition of Game of Code: "This new edition has a special meaning for our team because, for the first time, the event will be 100% digital. We wanted to guarantee the safety of all the participants, but it also opens new doors for us, as organisers. Indeed, it is the second event in a very short time that we reinvented completely, by transforming our business and processes and transposing participants' experiences to a virtual form".
After 36 hours of coding, the jury of the Open Data, Open Banking and Hack the Future challenges watched and evaluated the 36 innovative solutions pitched by the teams via Zoom, with more than 450 external attendees who followed the competition on the YouTube live-stream.
The winners of each category were as follows:
- Team ‹h1›Eureka!‹/h1›, with their project CoronaAI.lu, won the first place of the Open Data challenge, proposed by Digital Luxembourg. As explained by the developers, "our web solution is an information hub, which for users acts as a gateway to coronavirus information from a range of Internet sources. By simply typing a question into the website's search bar, users can easily access / find important information relating to the health crisis in Luxembourg".
- The project shoebox.lu, developed by Team AccountTech was named winner of the Open Banking challenge, sponsored by LUXHUB. The developers worked on a project which digitalises the process of exchanging data between accountants and their clients. The team members highlighted: "We enable small companies to never forget an invoice and prepare their financials so that the accountant won't need to ask for additional documentation, saving many hours and headaches".
- Team 2GM was awarded the Hack the Future prize, sponsored by Docler Holding, for their project "Binoculars". The team convinced the jury members with its app which "estimates real-time traffic in places anywhere in the world, based on publicly available data like social media, government APIs, etc. It can help to solve the main issues of the current pandemic situation: keeping social distancing and re-boosting the economy".
The jury for Digital Luxembourg's Open Data challenge was composed of Patrick Weber (Attaché, Ministry for Digitalisation), Thierry Degeling (Security analyst, GOVCERT.LU), Francis Kaell (Head of the open data and access to information division, SIP), Ben Max (Project Officer, Ministry for Digitalisation), Thierry Zeien (Attaché, Ministry of State, Department of Media, Telecommunications and Digital Policy), Ellen Salloum (Teacher and Administrative Officer, Digital Inclusion) and Rose Edwards (Project Manager, Digital Inclusion).
The jury for LUXHUB's Open Banking challenge was made up of Claude Marx (CEO, CSSF), Jacques Pütz (CEO, LUXHUB), Wojciech Soltysiak (Director, Information Technology Europe, PayPal), Nasir Zubairi (CEO, The LHoFT) and Sven Siat (Head Connectivity, SIX Payments).
The jury for Docler Holding Luxembourg's Hack the Crisis challenge was composed of Carlos Gonser (Engineering Manager, Docler Holding), Vincent Eggen (CEO, Pictet Technologies), Kolos Kaszály (CTO, Docler Holding) and Tamer Aidek (Vice President of Software Development and Cloud Solutions, Tao Testing).
"This new digital adventure offers coders the opportunity to join from afar and the great success of this online format will give us the opportunity to open the competition to a larger audience in the years to come, with a phygital event. It already began this year, with teams joining from Russia, Colombia, India, the Philippines... among others. We continue to learn from this crisis", concluded Kamel Amroune.
