Six months of preparation, over one hundred sixty registered competitors, ten teams of finalists and 24 hours of programming resulted in the creation of three fantastic solutions for the Volunteers’ Center Zagreb in the first edition of the hackathon Change Code.
The weekend before last was marked by the Change Code – hackathon intended for students of all Croatian universities and colleges. The goal was to show that creative and hard-working student teams in just 24 hours of joint work can make a positive change in society.
In co-operation with Volunteers’ Center Zagreb, on the occasion of the ‘Croatia Volunteers’ event, a task was devised for the contestants to design a virtual place for bringing together the associations that need voluntary help and citizens who want to volunteer.
Under the guidance of expert mentors from the Change Code organizational team, ten teams started developing their solutions, that were judged by the members of the jury – Jela Prgić Znika, executive director of the Volunteers’ Center Zagreb; Vedran Mornar, PhD; Zlatko Stapić, PhD; Nikša Korper Žemva, UX designer and Plamenko Barišić, Chairman of the Board of KING ICT.
Ten teams – Bećari, BGHP, Dilseksičari, Do You Even Code?, Game Changers, KKF, segFault, Sirotilja Valley, Team Name G and Više manje samo Kanye showed the knowledge, skill, and ingenuity in solving the task. However, three teams showed what it means to think outside the box.
Students from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing – Livio Benčik, Pavao Jerebić, Mihovil Ilakovac and Martin Džida, known as Dilseksičari, won the third place and a prize of 5.000 KN, while Ivan Bebek, Ibrahim Hadžiž, Ivan Oršolić and Leo Siniša Radočić won the second place and 10.000 KN.
The team whose solution won the first place and 20.000 KN, with amazing ratings from the judges in the areas of functionality and user experience, with the required ‘wow factor’ is “Do You Even Code?” – Tino Balint, Dean Jakovljević, Antonio Martinović and Igor Rinkovec. Young men have developed a solution that encourages citizens to volunteer with the help of gamification and the use of Chat Bot. All submitted actions are visible to the users on the map of Croatia, with the possibility of submitting new ones via texts or photographs. The solution consists of a mobile application for volunteers and web applications for the Volunteers’ Center Zagreb administrators and organizations seeking volunteers.
Along with the main prize, all the contestants and participants of the Change Code also participated in the #changecode contest, which generated a lot of creative and entertaining content on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. In a random selection Ivan Miličević, from the team ‘Više manje samo Kanye’, won a gift package for one of the most popular photos with over 50 likes!
The Code Change organizers from KING ICT are extremely pleased with the first edition of the hackathon and are especially thankful to the participants, volunteers, partners and sponsors who supported the event and made it successful.
