Within the framework of the 3^rd DevFest Hackathon 2018 competition from 30 November - 2 December, the Demo Day 2018 saw many highly practical projects. They all demonstrated the depth of the research, teamwork, and commitment put into the transformation of Da Nang into a technologically and youthful smart city.

In addition to enhancing their programming skills, the participating IT students have the chance to enhance teamwork and communication, presentation skills

Co-hosted by the Google Developers Group (GDG) Mien Trung and the municipal Entrepreneurship Support Company Ldt (DNES), the event attracted the participation of more than 1,000 young people.

The competition aimed at creating meaningful playgrounds for programmers, IT enthusiasts exchange their experience , and update the latest technology trends in the world.

A total of 100 programmers and 30 mentors worked throughout the 48-hour contest. Afterwards, the 10 best projects from the 16 Hackathon groups were selected for presentation on the Demo Day.

In the end, the Wiinav project, created by a group of students from the city’s Duy Tan University (DTU), won the first prize of 10 million VND, and it was also selected to be one of the most outstanding start-up projects in DNES’s 7th incubation programme.

After 48 hours of non-stop programming, the Wiinav team presented their impressive community-based GIS mapping application.

Dr Anand Nayyar, a DTU lecturer and mentor at the competition this year. He said, “I am very impressed with the students’ achievements, which can be considered as the starting point of their future careers”.

Their ‘Community Map’ application has the same basic functionality as a normal map but allows the users to request assistance, give their own traffic reports and recommend places, such as restaurants and gas stations.

A Wiinav team member said: “Our group often end up in unexpected situations, running out of fuel, getting flat tires far from a repair shop, getting stuck in traffic jams and so on. We came up with the idea of a “Community Map” system, which allows travellers to communicate with each other for help or traffic reports, to save valuable travel time. We all agreed however that we did not need to create a new technology, but could use existing ones to develop a useful and practical solution for the community”.

Other highly appreciated projects included ‘A smart parking solution’; ‘Electioneering’; ‘An application for making appointments and obtaining queuing tickets at public administrative offices’; ‘An application to manage the streets, using traffic lights and surveillance cameras’; ‘A tsunami and bad weather warning system for fishermen’; ‘Sharing hostel’; and ‘Chatbot’.

Mr Dang Duc Nam from the city branch of the Axon Active Viet Nam Co, Ltd highlighted the importance of the competition in facilitating the contestants to enhance their IT programming, teamwork and communication, presentation skills which IT students need to enhance further in order to satisfy the strict recruitment requirements after their graduation.

Nguyen Thi Phuong Nhi, the founder of the Google Developers Group (GDG) Mien Trung, said the mentors wholeheartedly gave specific and detailed instructions to the participating projects. “We encourage programmers to dream big, but let's start with practical and specific things”, she noted.