Big Data for Business Hackathon: Start Your Tech Startup

We invite developers, analysts, marketers, designers, product managers and business angels to the Big Data for Business hackathon - a two-day team competition in developing software products that solve business problems through data analysis. The hackathon will be held November 18-19 in the Kazan IT park. The event is sponsored by EMC and Brocade. Partners are Textocat, DGL, Provectus and the Business Incubator of the IT Park in 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,
• receive recognition
• win valuable prizes
• adopt experience in the technological field and principles of product packaging,
• take the first step towards your startup based on data analysis technologies
• Meet promising Big Data product teams.

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

Area

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

Format

The hackathon will be held during the day for two days. Note that on the night of November 18-19, the hackathon site will be closed. The hackathon program includes pitching ideas, implementing projects, assisting trainers on the site, protecting projects before renowned experts in the jury and, of course, catering (great dinners, 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.

Hackathon is a team competition (although it is not forbidden 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 your favorite project along the way.

As usual, the goal of the team at the hackathon is to implement and present a prototype software product. The main topic at the Big Data for Business hackathon is data analysis, including Big Data. Another feature of this hackathon is the requirement of commercial attractiveness of the project. This means that teams will need to protect the project during the presentation by answering the following 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 the development of the project? The target audience of projects is not limited to the scope of business-to-business (B2B). We also accept products designed for other types of markets: business-to-customer (B2C), business-to-government (B2G), etc.

Thus, the Big Data for Business hackathon will be interesting for different groups of professionals: it is important not only to sell the product, but also to “package” it competently.

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

Project Criteria

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

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

as well as personal subjective assessments and experience.

Jury

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

• Sergey Zolotarev, Director of Pivotal Russia
• Konstantin Savenkov, COO Bookmate
• Lenar Khalikov, Director of the IT Inc Business Incubator
• Ayrat Khasyanov, Director of the Higher School of ITIS KFU
• Bulat Karimov, Head of Mediametrics .

Trainers

Teams will help independent trainers:

• Grigory Sapunov - former head of Yandex.News service development, 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 the field of information retrieval and applied machine learning
• Rinat Gareev is CEO and data scientist at Textocat, a specialist in natural language processing and applied machine learning.

Coaches assist teams both in implementation (in the field of technology) and in the preparation of 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 a jury decision):

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

Separate prizes will be given to the team, marked by all the participants of the hackathon (“audience prize”).

How to prepare?

You can: get acquainted with 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.

Non-resident participants are advised to reserve in advance a place in a hotel or hostel.

How to participate?

Register on the hackathon website , take part in discussions in our VK group and invite colleagues. Meet me in Kazan!