Synthesis Hackathon 2022: An example of how to ideate and create in just 24 hours

Leading software development company, Synthesis, recently held its annual Hackathon, which encouraged employees to build fifteen technology-driven applications and tools within just 24 hours.

The last Synthesis Hackathon took place in 2019, due to the national lockdown, and it returned this year to be bigger and better than ever before.

Sixty ideas were submitted from Synthesis employees and within 24 hours, over 100 Synthesis developers teamed up in Johannesburg, Cape Town, and online to create 15 minimal viable products (MVPs) using AWS Cloud.

Employees were encouraged to submit any idea – from the commercially viable to those that are purely entertaining.

Synthesis opened up the hackathon for two hours to anyone who wanted to experience rapid innovation and over 100 guests signed up.

MyBroadband was invited to see what the hackathon participants had created, and we were incredibly impressed by what they achieved in only one day.

“You all went beyond yourselves to prove that in 24 hours, amazing achievements can be made,” said Synthesis Managing Director Michael Shapiro.

“The hackathon showcases how quickly ideas can be generated and built out – all that is needed is a culture that rewards failure in the pursuit of innovation.”

Synthesis Marketing Manager Kim Furman added that the focus of the event is to encourage employees to embrace their creativity.

“From midnight laser tag to build your own SWAG, we created a creative experimentation lab for these 24 hours for our employees,” said Furman.

“It is this very love of experimentation and playfulness that has led to Synthesis pioneering cloud technology and creating the first-in-Africa tap on phone technology.”

Big innovation

Synthesis employees produced a range of excellent projects over the 24 hours, and a panel of judges went through their work to crown the top three entries.

The judges took a range of metrics into account before selecting the top three projects – with the final winners detailed below.

3rd Place – Informed Investments

This application focused on providing a comprehensive range of investment data to novice and experienced investors.

The tool gets this data by taking companies’ financial documents, scraping their tables for data, and categorizing the data accordingly.

Users can then compare different companies and their metrics through a slick interface to make informed financial decisions – without having to spend hours trawling through company reports and financial statements.

2nd Place – Don’t Step on Lava

In the “Don’t Step on Lava” game, players are shown a picture of somebody pulling a strange face, and must take a picture of themselves pulling the same face.

The game then uses its systems to generate a score based on how accurately the player has recreated the face.

If the player’s face was the most accurate, their platform moves up a level – and all the while, lava is slowly rising.

If you don’t win enough rounds, you will “step on lava” – and the game will end.

1st Place – Logify

Synthesis uses an application called Clockify to track the work hours of its employees.

The winning team found a way to simplify the logging of these hours for Synthesis employees through a chatbot which supports voice commands.

This lets users log their hours without typing a single word, and was awarded first place at the Synthesis Hackathon 2022.

Massive success

The Synthesis hackathon was a major success and surpassed all expectations for the event, said Shapiro at its conclusion.

He said he is now looking forward to the Synthesis Hackathon 2023 and believes it will be even more exciting.

“We will try to make it even bigger and more successful, perhaps by bringing in more people from outside to raise the stakes,” he said.

Click here to learn more about Synthesis.

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Below are some additional pictures from the Synthesis Hackathon 2022 event