Ideas for Kaunas will be created in “Kaunas Startups” Hackathon

The first weekend of October in the KTU “Santaka Valley” will be intense: several hundred creative minds will unite into teams in order to create ideas, visions and projects for Kaunas during the Hackathon of the “Kaunas Startups 2018” program. Together with a big team of KAYAK mentors, the participants will have a unique opportunity to use the big data of Kaunas which will be opened for the first time and to “employ” it by creating applications, social initiatives and other activities or products.

Everyone is welcome: from programmers to artists and managers

“Maybe you have ideas on how to improve waste collection in Kaunas city? Or maybe you have come up with solutions to congestion problems as well as ways how to improve the efficiency of public transport, or finally, maybe you have a vision of how Kaunas should look like in the year 2050? Come and speak up about all of this in the hackathon of the “Kaunas Startups”, says Tomas Proscevičius, one of the organizers of the hackathon and the representative of “KTU Startup Space”.

According to him, the event on 6-7^thof October will welcome people from all kinds of professional fields: from programming, IT specialists to marketing, communication, design or art creators. “During the event, mentors will help to develop your idea: you will learn how to present the greatest visions, create marketing plan and carry out market investigation and analysis. You will work in teams, develop visuals and descriptions of your idea/product, and analyze its application and other aspects”.

The organizers predict that 100 to 105 participants from different cities will gather in the “Kaunas Startups 2018” hackathon, creating 20 to 30 teams. The event will be open not only to the participants, but also to visitors who want to get acquainted with the way the startups hackathon works and looks like. The ideas born and developed during the hackathon as well as the products created will be demonstrated at the end of the event during the public presentation.

The team with the best ideas for Kaunas will be rewarded: the event prize fund is 3,500 EUR.

Hackathon is a part of the “Kaunas Startups 2018” networking program: this program will consist of twelve series of events during the period from September to December. There will be free of charge lectures and seminars for new entrepreneurs: from creativity development, idea generation and its delivery to investors to team building, time planning and legal aspects of business.

Experienced mentors, professionals in their field, will lead the way

A team of experienced mentors from hackathon’s partner KAYAK – the company providing the world’s most popular travel planning toolkit – will work with participating teams in a two-day challenge:

– There will be the Director of Engineering Modestas Kapušinskas, leading a 40+ team of programmers of the highest level, which successfully develops travel planning toolkit of KAYAK, Momondo, SWOODOO, Cheapflightsand Checkfelix.

– The Head of the Department Darius Jankauskas will teach how to find ways to develop good-quality system within a short period of time, share time management experience and help hackathon teams to keep up the work.

– Jonas Turevičius, working with various programming languages on different platforms for more than 10 years, will remind that the same rule applies everywhere: less code is better. “The simplicity of the code and the deep understanding of what the consumer needs is the one thing that distinguishes the professional from the beginner,” says Jonas who intends to share his insights with the participants.

– Vytautas Perliba has already been able to work with projects such as Wix, Sunday.dk, Momondoor OpenTable. His help and insights will be helpful especially for those who are working with the latest technologies such as React, Hyperapp, NodeJs, Typescript, Webpack, etc.

– Even at the time of his university career, Mantas Serapinas participated in more than one hackathon, among the most memorable are the Facebook London Regional Hackaton, where he became the winner, and the Facebook Final Hackathon in Menlo Park, where he was among finalists. Today, software engineer Mantas says that the two biggest challenges during hackathons are overcoming the need to sleep and fulfillment of your idea. “Unfortunately, I will not solve the first problem, but I’m able to help with the second one: from the finishing of the idea to the development of various technologies.”

– Gediminas Tubelevičius will help the teams to cope with technological challenges, because in his opinion, only practice and even more practice creates skillful programmers: “When you create something real, you face challenges which you couldn’t even imagine while reading the books. And those challenges are the best fuel for learning and professional growth.”

– Software development professional Dovilė Martišiūtė will teach how to turn the complex problem into an abstract and simplified model: “This is what helps to discover the right path to the desired result.”

Participants may register for the hackathon here.

Date: 6–7 October.

Start: 9:00 am.

Location: “KTU Santaka Valley”, K. Baršausko 59, Kaunas

Information by Kaunas IN Business Division