Ready, steady, code! 2.0. Hackathon powered by Asseco SEE

At the end of November ten student teams fought to win the Ready, steady, code! 2.0 Competition, organised by Asseco SEE and the Faculty of Organization and Informatics.

At the end of November ten student teams fought to win the Ready, steady, code! 2.0 Competition, organised by Asseco SEE and the Faculty of Organization and Informatics.

On 21 and 22 November 2015 the Faculty of Organization and Informatics, Varaždin, Croatia, hosted the second “Ready, steady, code! 2.0” Competition, organised jointly with Asseco SEE. “Ready, steady, code!” is a student competition in which participants demonstrate their knowledge and skills in software development. The duration of the competition is 24 hours, during which the participants work intensively on a problem-solving task. After that they present their solution to the jury of experts comprising business professionals and members of the academic community.

This year the teams of contestants had to develop the web and the mobile application for paintball players, with the purpose of providing support to the players and competition organisers in a stressful environment, such as a paintball game.

The official opening ceremony, which took place in the morning on the first day of the competition, was hosted by Viktor Olujić, Authentication Department Manager in Asseco SEE, and Neven Vrček, Ph.D., the Dean of the Faculty. The speakers said that this form of cooperation between the business and academic community was very important and necessary, and that they hoped to participate in such joint projects in the future. Mr. Vrček, the Dean, pointed out that were it not for the individuals representing the Faculty and Asseco SEE who had been ready to put in their maximum efforts, energy and time, such an event would have never been organized successfully. 

Ten teams who fought for the prizes comprised mostly University students of the Faculty of Organization and Informatics (FOI, Varaždin), the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing (FER, Zagreb), the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Osijek (FFOS) and the Polytechnic of Zagreb (TVZ). One of the teams consisted of high school students (the Ruđer Bošković Technical School), and this year we had female contestants for the first time, four of them in total.

It should be emphasized that this was the Hackathon with the largest prize pool in Croatia. Two teams abandoned the competition in the development phase, while eight teams presented their solutions on Sunday evening in front of the audience.

The winning team, called „Fire Breathing Rubber Duckies“, comprised David Ante Macan, Denis Pavlović, Stefano Kliba and Mario Novoselec. All of them were students of the Faculty of Organization and Informatics. Mario Novoselec, a winning team member, said:„ At every Hackathon a team gets an assignment sheet and needs to identify the most important requirements in a given task. I believe this is what our team did best, and that was the reason why we won the first place. “

The „Return ĆAĆA;“ team has been awarded the second place, and this team also consisted of the FOI students (Zoran Antolović, Andro Krezić, Igor Rinkovec and Lovro Predovan). A mixed team whose members were FOI students and TVZ students (Azzaro Mujić, Dinko Osrečki, Ivan Škoro and Gabrijel Mrgan), called „ma~“, won the third place.

Apart from the organisers, two other sponsors assisted the competition: The Varaždin County (Varaždinska županija) and Adrenalin centar Accredo. The only high school team in the competition, the team called „42“,  deserves to be mentioned as well, since they won the audience's heart thanks to their successful application and participation in the competition with University students, which demonstrated that their knowledge and competences were competitive enough to be considered their equals.

Viktor Olujić from Asseco SEE, a jury member, said: „The assessment criteria we used to decide on the winners were the following: how well the team dealt with the subject, what technological solutions they provided, whether the graphical interface was user-friendly or not, whether the solution was easy to use and how the project was documented.“