Hacking competitions aren’t just recreational anymore — they can make a fun and engaging workplace experience where people can develop solutions to their big projects and problems.
You may have heard of Hackathons before, but would you be able to come up with a bunch of Hackathon ideas for cloud computing, one of the latest industries to take part in it.
Solutions for customer convenience in innovations require an extensive collaboration of industry experts to figure out the answers. There is no better place to solve those problems than at an event with a large gathering of them.
You should consider convincing your business to join the trend and boost your brand by hosting one of these hackathon events.
What Is a Cloud Computing Hackathon?
A cloud computing hackathon is a coding event where developers from across the industry bring in hackers to try and exploit security flaws in their cloud computing software.
These hackers try to crack and break into cloud software under a time-restricted competition where their speed is tested.
On top of being a fun event for hackers, developers also benefit from finding security vulnerabilities and fresh ideas generated in the competitive atmosphere.
7 Cool Hackathon Ideas for Cloud Computing
There aren’t any wrong answers to creating cool hackathon contest ideas. Just by hosting the event, you are already going to be reaping significant benefits.
However, it is vital to keep in mind the professionals who will attend, the skill level of the participants, and how they will be able to come together in a short time to accomplish the tasks you give them.
Run HTML Blog Contest
If this is your first hackathon or your employees have never been through a hackathon before, a blog contest is great for beginners. The goal of the match would be to divide participants into teams where they will race to create a blog with a certain number of pages.
This contest would allow an excellent outlet for creativity where the blog’s look can be left open to how creative the team members can be.
Judges can award bonus points for how well the blog can integrate cloud computing into it and all the other features teams can design into the blog.
This contest would be suitable for beginners because it tests the fundamentals of computer programming while also allowing the game’s skill ceiling to remain high. This way, everyone can feel like they can participate while the few with more skill can have their time to shine.
Everyone designs something that can be easily understood, where participants, judges, and spectators alike can see the differences that programming skills can make.
Design a Smart Shopping Cart
Participants will be divided into teams to build a smart shopping system that can detect and process items that customers add to their carts, allowing customers to pay for their items right at the cart.
This idea would make a good competition because it is timely in the industry, and many companies are working on producing prototypes for this customer convenience.
The challenge would be for teams to create a system to detect inventory items and use automatic billing.
This challenge would require a cloud solution because of the speed data would need to be processed. Cloud computing is also necessary because retrofitting old systems to accomplish the desired effect would not be feasible.
Engineer a Cloud Deployment System Using Openstack
Open Stack is an open-source platform where developers use virtual resources that are gathered together so that they can make private and public cloud environments.
Open Stack will ensure fair competition by equally distributing resources between the different teams so the judges can compare apples to apples when judging contestants.
The competition’s goal would be to create the most efficient virtual environment judged on a series of criteria. Criteria that make sense should include network stability, user interface, automatic resource allocation, and data integration speeds.
Create a Secure Text Transfer Using the Cloud
Encryption techniques and data transfer speed are important indicators of success in cloud computing, so creating a simple contest that tests these qualities is right up a cloud professional’s alley.
Contestants need to develop a two-way encryption technique that can exchange messages without being hacked or leaked that can be used in a public or private cloud environment.
Design a Chatbot Capable of Providing Answers to Questions on a Website
Chatbots are fun ways of distributing information that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to give an appropriate answer to a client asking a question.
It is easy to get direct feedback for this type of activity since the client can tell right away if they received the correct answer or not.
This type of project would succeed well in a university where students can ask questions in topics where they aren’t experts but still get good feedback.
The business applicants for query technology have a lot of room to be explored as machine learning, and artificial intelligence becomes increasingly essential parts of the technology business environment.
Seek and Snip Unnecessarily Duplicated Data
Redundant data is a problem that can accumulate over time, causing system errors and eating up storage space.
Contestants for this match would design a command line to identify whether or not data is redundant or if the information is being successfully found when queried correctly.
Bonus points are awarded for contestants who design a tool that boosts process performance and runs in a cloud environment without issues.
Contestants who are able to reduce the complexity of their commands and the redundant files will succeed in producing a winning combination.
Design a Data Mining Application that Is More Efficient
Cloud Computing is all about maximizing storage capacity so businesses can gain the maximum benefit from their investment in cloud technologies.
Teams would design a cloud project that can use a unique model of retrieving and querying data that is more efficient and cost-effective than a single selection method of finding data.
Because cloud servers charge users by the amount of data transferred, any technique that can limit unnecessary uses of that data will improve the viability of that business’s cloud endeavors.
Efficiency will also help reduce the power usage spent on cloud activities, supporting tech efforts to promote environmental sustainability.
Reducing power consumption and saving on production costs will help reduce the tech industry’s impact on the environment. Hence, data efficiency is an important issue going into the future.
Goals of Running a Cloud Computing Hackathon
You will have to keep in mind the process of creating a hackathon and the logistics of doing one work while making the goals you want to accomplish during your hackathon.
Generate Valuable and Actionable Business Ideas
While a considerable part of a hackathon is the publicity and community culture, it is also essential to leverage diverse and focused resources on attainable business ideas.
Creating some icebreaker competitions can have value, but a significant percentage of the projects should have an apparent problem that the competitor teams can reasonably solve.
Be careful not to over-plan the scope of proposed projects for the competition. It can be easy to overbook and overestimate the work contestants can reasonably accomplish during planning.
If contestants cannot finish or feel interrupted from accomplishing their goals, the contest can lessen the positive morale that the hackathon is meant to provide.
Boost Innovation Culture by Strengthening the Cloud Computing Community
By being a host of a hackathon, you will be contributing to the development of cloud computing and hackathon culture. You must take steps to ensure the event’s smooth operation to strengthen the cloud computing community.
One crucial step is to match up experts and inexperienced participants in equal numbers so that everyone learns and the competitions are fair. It is often the case that if left up to the participants, they will isolate themselves by skill level.
Experts will team up with other experts, and inexperienced participants will group up with other naive participants. This situation creates a dynamic where the unsuspecting team members will feel lost without guidance, and the experts won’t have a reason to vocalize or explain what they are doing.
Create an Organized Event that Is Full of Details
Be sure to make an event focused on details so that you can get the maximum benefit out of it. Planning is essential to make sure things run smoothly. Otherwise, you may lack the focus to create an engaging event.
If you are doing an in-person event, find a venue early to host your event and set the date. The earlier you reserve the space, the better opportunities to promote the event and generate excitement.
The venue will need to have a few things available for a successful hackathon.
- Wifi Internet Connection
- Enough Power Strips at every Section
- Enough Space and seating for the maximum amount of attendees you think you could have
- Projector Equipment
- Accessibility entrances and access
Looking into potential sponsors can also help your event run smoother. They can handle things like overhead costs, logistics of food, promoting products, and providing merch for your attendees to receive that commemorates the event.
Benefits of Hosting a Cloud Computing Hackathon for Your Company
The number of benefits of hosting your cloud computing hackathon is innumerable. They affect everything from company morale to the promotion and recruiting to practical business solutions that you can bring to the market.
Finding New Talent and Inspiring Talent from Within
Companies have a chance when hosting competitions to discover the strengths and evaluate opportunities with the ranks of their employees.
Competitions are also great recruiting tools. Generating buzz and excitement around your company will attract new candidates invited to the competition. These candidates will see firsthand the skill and prowess of their peers and will be inspired to match the talent and intensity on display.
Through social networking, your company can discover positions you could use within your company and compare your talent to others to find where others are lacking and where you are lacking.
Inspire Team Unity and Cohesion
Humans are notoriously bad at viewing the benefits of progress over an extended scale. The impact one person can make can get lost in the shuffle and cog-turning of professional tasks.
Even if company employees are gradually improving day by day and week by week, it becomes hard to notice this progress when you are living a day at a time.
Competition is a perfect time to break the daily routine and take a moment to reflect on how much everyone has improved. Adding game elements to work is a great way to add striving achievement and accomplishment to work problems.
People may think of IT work as repetitive or boring because of the nature of its work. Still, IT professionals can tap into a vast amount of creativity and demonstrate opportunities for creative solutions.
Focus on Problems
A lot of time in business is spent working on minor problems and spreading resources broadly to address these problems. By gathering industry professionals and resources together in one place, it is a great way to hit significant issues with a lot of resources at the same time.
One advantage of a hackathon is that Diverse teams assemble to work on one problem during events. Teams with diverse thinking will succeed in coming up with multiple solutions where less diversity might come up short.
Team members will be encouraged to swap best practices and solutions with other companies in a meeting of the minds that everyone can look forward to participating in.
Best of all, all of these resources will be concentrated on working on one problem a lot for a short time, saving a lot of time investment that might be used in a regular work environment.
Final points
Hackathons are a unique means of collaboration, networking, brand exposure, and problem-solving all in one. One event can represent a significant leap forward for the participants in only a few days for the entire year.
If you are trying or open to the idea of any one of these benefits of hosting a hackathon event, you should strongly look into the possibility of bringing it to your company.
If you’re ready to get started with organizing your hackathon, contact us. Our team is ready to help you!
