Friday we had a chance to experience something new in Japan. We decided to take part in a Hackathon. Term hackathon stands for an event, where people of different background (business people, programmers and designers) come together for a day or a weekend and work on an innovative tech startup idea.This is a first event related to startups I am attending in Japan. And it was really interesting to see how Japanese culture fits startrups or coding culture.
The hackathon started on Friday evening at 6 p.m.. It was a bilingual event. There were a few foreigners attending, some of them didn't speak Japanese. While on the other hand not all Japanese participants spoke good English. The event started with introduction of the company ChatPerf (partner of the hackathon). Check out their website, pretty interesting product. http://chatperf.com/ It is a startup based in Tokyo. They have created a small device for iOS products that adds dimension of smell to user experience. The only drawback of it is that you have to manually input a cartridge with smell to the device. However possible applications of the idea are various.
Images source http://blog.wishscope.com/特集ページ/2348/
The goal of he weekend was to come up with an app for ChatPerf sent device. The main organizer of the event, ChatPerf representative was speaking most of the time in English. The first speaker he invited was presenting in Japanese, however he was talking about very interesting startup ideas. He has mentioned a company called Neurowear (http://neurowear.com/news/index.html). It is a Tokyo-based startup with a range of amazing products. Their core idea behind all of the products in to connect your brain waves to external devices for some purposes. I suggest you to have a look at those projects on their website, they are really impressive! Here are few videos.
After the speaker was done, we were supposed to start with networking. There were around 40-50 participants, our goal was to walk around the room and present our skills in order to build a team with others. Here Japanese specifics got involved. People stood up gathered in a big group but didn't know how to start and what to do... This lasted for a while. The the organizers remembered, that they forgot to announce the main topic of the hackathon: "Fun and Party game for Chatperf". Then we had to take initiative to our hands in order to form teams. Finally we were able to form 6 teams of 4-5 people with a coder, designer and business person in each team.
Than brainstorming session in each team started. Organizers have distributed Red Bull to everyone. Seems like Red Bull is not only associated with extreme sports, but also with Tech and startup events. The evening was over approximately at 10 p.m. and we were exited to start next day in approximately 12 hours.
Next day we had 6 hours to work on our idea, presentation, design and code. The presentations were scheduled for 4 p.m. By that time we were able to finalize our idea, product concept and our designers and programmer finished the app. 8 guests were invited to the event to judge. After the presentation, one winner were chosen. The winning team has done a great job and deserved the first prize. They received an offer from ChatPerf to continue working on their app and try to commercialize it later. Their idea was the following: an app for iPad used in restaurants and bars which have iPad (tablet) menus. Visitors are invited to play a game for a bonus. They are offered to guess a smell of a meal (multiple choice question). If they guess, they receive a discount on an item.
Our team JASS finished second. We were offering a smell guessing set with 12 smells and an app. Users guess smells while sitting around a table in a group. Whoever doesn`t guess correctly, has to do something (drink, for example). There are certain level of complexity, special "skunk" event and other surprises. We felt like that could become a nice present and an entertaining way to play in a big group (built around smell).
Overall it was great experience! Very fun weekend =) Here are a few illustrations of our idea and pictures from the event.
Team JASS
Photo by Joerg Weisshaar
Hackathon participants
Photo by Koti Tsubouchi
Hello Antony!
ReplyDeleteI was googling about Keio University and your blog appeared!
It was very informative and useful for me because I will go to exchange at Keio in March next year :) Your blog made me feel very excited about my incoming exchange program next year, you seem to have a lots of fun there :)
Anyway, Could you please recommend the dormitory which the price is reasonable and near the university? Looking forward to hearing from you.
Muk :D