We hosted "TwoGate Dev Camp 2022 Summer," a hackathon exclusively for Kosen (College of Technology) students and graduates, organized by TwoGate.
From September 3 to 5, 2022, we held "TwoGate Dev Camp 2022 Summer" in Tokyo, a hackathon open exclusively to current Kosen students and graduates! Due to the impact of the novel coronavirus, previous sessions had been held online, making this our first offline event in two years. Here is an in-depth report on the intense and exciting event driven by these active Kosen students and graduates.
What is "TwoGate Dev Camp 2022 Summer"?
It is a hackathon exclusively for current Kosen students and graduates, where they form teams with active engineers. Participants engage in short-term, intensive development while receiving advice from professional engineers.
The theme for this event is "web apps that update offline experiences in the post-COVID era".
Teams were formed consisting of three students and one professional engineer mentor. Each team utilized their skills to build highly original web applications.
・Originality of the idea
・Technical superiority
・Utility
・Completeness
Teams competed based on the four criteria above, aiming for the championship. An awards ceremony was held on the final day, with members of the winning team receiving one iPad each.
Schedule
The schedule was carried out as follows:
[Day 1] 2022.9.3
13:00 Kick-off
13:30 Development
19:00 Day 1 Ends
At 1:00 PM, the hackathon kicked off. It began with everyone introducing themselves, followed by an explanation of the hackathon details. Afterwards, the teams immediately got to work on development.
[Day 2] 2022.9.4
09:00 Development
19:00 Day 2 Ends
The second day was fully dedicated to development. Each team worked diligently, trial-and-error style, to build upon the ideas brainstormed the day before. Mentors accompanied each team to provide technical support and advice. Since it was a short-term hackathon, having mentors readily available to help resolve any questions or uncertainties provided peace of mind.
[Day 3] 2022.9.5
09:00 Development
09:30 Product Presentations
11:30 Awards, Feedback, and Networking
14:00 Event Ends
On the final day, teams made their final adjustments in preparation for their presentations. The presentations began at 9:30 AM, featuring passionate pitches from each team. Once all presentations concluded, the Grand Prize winner was finally decided. After the awards ceremony, feedback session, and networking party, the event came to a close.
Introducing Each Team's Developed Products!
During this hackathon, various ideas and opinions flew back and forth in each team. Here, we introduce the products developed by each team!
Team A: "Repo-Map"
While many outdoor events were canceled due to COVID-19, food festivals have gradually started making a comeback since the beginning of 2022. Under these circumstances, with rising expectations for food festivals and projected increases in visitor numbers, it is clear that COVID-19 countermeasures—previously focused on border control and quarantine—need to be updated for a "living with COVID-19" era using web applications and IoT technologies.
Team A's Repo-Map was created to ease congestion and create a space for visitors to exchange opinions, with the ultimate goal of restoring visitor numbers to pre-pandemic levels and revitalizing food festivals.
[Key Highlights]
・Visualizing review locations and access counts by acquiring location data
・Information exchange through real-time reviews
[A 'Three-Way Win' Service for Organizers, Vendors, and Attendees]
・Organizers: Increased revenue by raising per-customer spending at the festival
・Vendors: Increased foot traffic and feedback from reviews
・Attendees: Improved satisfaction through congestion mitigation and sharing impressions
To address the issues of "not being able to visualize congestion" and "not knowing the quality of stall items," Repo-Map encourages customers to spread out their visiting times by visualizing congestion status, and improves satisfaction through peer-to-peer reviews.
Team B: "Nebuta Live"
Team B developed an app for young people to make the day of Nebuta Festivals across the country even more enjoyable. Nebuta is a highly spectacular festival where massive, illuminated lanterns (= Nebuta) are paraded on floats. The largest ones attract as many as one million visitors in a week. The app resolves various challenges associated with Nebuta Festivals and offers brand-new ways to enjoy them.
[Key Highlights]
・Focusing on the specific event of the "Nebuta Festival"
・Providing a new solution called "Nebuta Live" with simple yet sufficient features in a domain that has clear issues but lacked obvious solutions
・A lean, simple, and easy-to-use product that carefully extracts the challenges of the Nebuta Festival and devises matching features for each
[Solving All of Nebuta Festival's Long-standing Pain Points at Once]
・Enabling users to locate Nebuta floats by displaying them on a map in real-time
・Displaying Nebuta routes on the map
・Displaying fun trivia about Nebuta within the app
If you don't know the route or current location of the Nebuta floats, are caught in crowds, or lack familiarity with the area, problems arise such as "not being able to find your favorite Nebuta" or "not knowing which way your favorite Nebuta is moving." Furthermore, without detailed knowledge of Nebuta available online, young people can feel left behind... "Nebuta Live" is a product designed to solve all of these long-standing issues of the Nebuta Festival at once.
Team C: "HackCard"
One challenge often felt at offline hackathons is, "I can't remember which person built which product!" During networking sessions after the hackathon, asking "Which product did you work on?" can feel a bit awkward. If you already knew which product team they belonged to, your questions and technical discussions could be much more lively. To address this, Team C created a simple business card app that pairs the developed product with a self-introduction.
[Key Highlights]
・Minimizing the required input fields when creating a business card to reduce setup time as much as possible for busy hackathon participants
・Keeping the page count to a minimum ("Home screen, Login screen, Card creation/list page") and building it as a SPA (Single Page Application) to eliminate loading wait times and ensure fast page transitions
・Designing the app to display information specifically tailored to the needs of engineers, which is not found in typical business card apps
[Making Offline Hackathon Networking More Enjoyable]
・Creating a business card by entering a name and repository URL via an input form
・Exchanging business cards by scanning the QR code displayed on each other's smartphones
・Enjoying networking while using the other person's card shown on the screen as a conversation starter!!!
・Saving the other person's business card in a list to look back at any time
What Team C developed is a business card exchange app designed to make student networking at offline hackathons more enjoyable. It allows users to easily create business cards that pair their developed products with developer information, offering a great icebreaker at post-hackathon networking sessions. Keeping the exchanged cards in a list also helps foster connections after the event.
Team D: "Ai² Gacha"
Team D digitized the purchase of randomly enclosed merchandise for outdoor live events using digital tickets. These digital tickets can be redeemed for physical items at the event venue.
[Key Highlights]
・Integrating the deep learning model BERT into the API
[Helping Fans Easily Get the Items They Want]
・Implemented features for online payment, digital ticket purchase, physical redemption, AI matching, and digital ticket trading
Team D developed a digital ticket-style merchandise purchase app for outdoor events. A great feature is that users can find out which item they drew at the digital ticket purchase stage, saving them from having to wait in long lines multiple times. Before the digital tickets are used, it also supports user-to-user trading, designed to match users based on their affinity for the merchandise, making it a highly fan-centric design.
Which team won the Grand Prize...!?
The Grand Prize goes to Team B!
Team B reportedly had a tough start, having to rethink their idea from day one. However, by focusing on "why they built it" rather than just the process of "how they built it," they succeeded in making their app easy to understand and relate to, which was key.
Additionally, while their idea was excellent, they mentioned it also made them keenly aware of their technical shortcomings in development. They remarked, "We want to take what we learned from this experience and keep doing our best in the future."
As a prize, every member of Team B will receive one iPad. Congratulations on winning the Grand Prize!
What were the participants' actual impressions?
Team A: Mr. Michiue
"Since this was an event specifically for Kosen students, it was easy to participate. It was great to connect not only with peers inside my school but also with people outside. Also, I felt TwoGate is a very good company as they put a lot of effort into nurturing talent."
Team B: Mr. Kurakake
"We were able to develop very peacefully over these three days, making it an incredibly rich learning experience. I was able to learn a lot from the event itself, from planning to programming, and thought it's a wonderful company."
Team C: Mr. Kuroiwa
"My technical skills were only at a tutorial level, but through this event, I got to know various libraries and frameworks. In addition, watching how the mentors researched things taught me how to search more efficiently, which was very educational. Thank you so much to all the mentors, especially Mr. Karasawa!"
Team D: Mr. Itokawa
"I felt that the company is more like a B2B2C business rather than pure B2C, and is very passionate about understanding customers and their products."
TwoGate Inc. is Packed with Engineers from Kosen Backgrounds
TwoGate Inc., which hosted the Kosen-exclusive hackathon "TwoGate Dev Camp 2022 Summer," is a web application development company where the vast majority of employees are Kosen graduates.
Leveraging the high technical skills and flexible creativity native to Kosen graduates, we have in-house developed no-code and low-code platforms to deliver high-quality apps in short timeframes. To achieve our mission of "creating and spreading comfortable digital experiences," we are building a team that continuously competes on our "power to build."
Additionally, as a Shopify Expert, TwoGate provides custom e-commerce site construction services tailored to our clients' needs. We also have a proven track record in various other areas, including customized apps for event venues equipped with features like merchandise pre-ordering and gacha mechanics, as well as an official app building service that has been adopted by over 100 companies.
[Key Case Studies]
Shopify Development & Maintenance Support
Caravan Event App Development Support Service
CRAYON Original App Development Support Service
If you would like to see more detailed case studies, please visit our official website via the link below.
TwoGate Inc. is currently expanding recruitment, including mid-career, new graduate, and internship positions. If you are interested in joining us, please feel free to contact us through our official website.
In Conclusion
This was the third installation of "TwoGate Dev Camp 2022 Summer," and we were finally able to achieve our long-awaited offline format, bringing the event to a successful close without any issues. Seeing the participants discuss their developed products with such joy and passion in a warm, friendly atmosphere throughout the event was heartwarming, and at the same time, made us feel confident in these young people who will shape the future.
Furthermore, through in-person creation, we felt the overflowing energy of all the students. We hope they will use this power to overcome the challenges of COVID-19 and continue to grow even further.
We plan to continue organizing hackathons in the future, so we encourage all students to join us next time!