The first ever HackFIT 2020 hackathon was held at the Faculty of Information Technology of the Czech Technical University in Prague from 28 to 29 February 2020. More than 60 competitors took part in the competition, many of whom were less than 20 years old. Yet, at the 24-hour IT marathon, the best were able to outperform themselves, create a meaningful project, and arrange collaboration with leading industry companies.
At the beginning of the event was the idea of giving high school and university students a chance to showcase and exercise their talent. During the presentation of the results, projects were presented in front of the astonished jury from the professional community. These projects can be made readily available for use in everyday life and in the industrial sphere. Companies such as Meteopress, Škoda Auto, Prozeta and Profinit are already interested in many of the resulting HackFIT projects.
The absolute winner and also winner of the Working with Open Data and Software Applications category is the team of students from the University of Hradec Králové. For their project "Applications for portable devices in the production process" they received the main prize of 50,000 CZK from Skoda Auto, 10,000 CZK for purchase at Alza.cz from Profinit and excursion to SAB Aerospace research premises not accessible to the public. “The aim of our project was to design suitable devices and applications that could work on these devices, thus streamlining the entire manufacturing process in a particular company,” says Štěpán Záliš, one of the winning team members. In the project, this team worked with smart watches that will form a communication bridge between people at the production line and executives.
HackFIT was organized by Ing. Lukáš Brchl, seasoned hackathon participant. He has already participated in several such events, from which he and his team won a victory that started his career in the establishment of a successful start-up company Dronetag. “Thanks to the state-of-the-art IT technology of our faculty, we succeeded in overcoming challenges a well-trained IT engineer and developer would not have to be ashamed of,” says Ing. Lukáš Brchl, FIT CTU graduate and main organizer of the event.
The present time favours young and talented people who are not afraid to go out on the market. In the case of HackFIT, we were able to witness the future of effective collaboration between career-inexperienced students and companies that are well known on the market.