Amdocs World Hackathon 2014

I remember in 2011 when I was doing my Masters from Purdue School of Science. I was the CS Rep for IEEE, and there was IEEE international 48 Hackathon which was going to happen. I had to be part of the organizing team, and I also wanted to take part in the event. I sent email to my class distro. No one replied. I approached a couple of guys, but even they turned me down. I was a bit disappointed then.Come 2014, and life has come a full circle. God provided me another chance with the Amdocs International Hackathon 2014. This time I did manage to build a full strength team and submit my entry. It was a 24 hour Hackathon.

The date was 16^th September and the time 8:30AM. I reached the center and the instructions overview session was going on. It lasted around half an hour. After that me and my friend took a stroll in the garden to do some brainstorming. The theme of the Hackathon was ‘Internet of Things’, so we wanted to be out of office as it would enable us to see more things  and think of possible novel ideas.

We went to the office after that and had meeting with the team and finalized the concept and the product we wanted to build. We also finalized the business flows we will implement. There is a saying, if you have 12 hour to cut a tree, use 10 hours to sharpen your axe! All plans ready, we made arrangements for laptops to be used, and at 3PM we were fully ready, and started working!

The team we had, we are all good friends, and there was going to be lot of fun for sure. The primary aim was to enjoy and have a good time, along with completing the product. We coded all night, and we did have a working product with 3 business flows working as expected without bugs. It was more than enough. We had built a smart internet of things system on the cloud in 24 hours. We had also added decision making skills to it using AI. We were very tired, but the happiness and satisfaction took over more!

It was a great experience for all 5 of us: Atul Tripathi (Atul ji, Behtareen, Dhurandhar, ATITT), Saurabh Hote (Jaykant Shikre, Hotteeeeee), Rahul Singh (Cheetah), Vinil Mehta (Vats) and myself Kartik Vyas.  Thank you guys for helping me in fulfilling my dream, your support was exceptional and this would not have been possible without you guys! I will definitely never forget those 24 hours of fun and coding!!