Successful Hackathon Panama 2019

28/11/2019

Eager to work collaboratively and share their knowledge, close to 40 professionals from around the region participated in Hackathon Panama 2019, an activity organized in Panama City within the framework of the LACNIC 32 event.

The meeting allowed participants to complement each other’s experiences and skill sets to improve various software projects developed and promoted by LACNIC. This hackathon was unique in that it not only leveraged participants’ coding abilities but also other skills, a fact that allowed valuable minds to join the initiative and put their skills to work in collaboration. Participants from 14 countries took part in the event and had the chance to expand their technical knowledge and contribute their ideas in relation to the challenges they were presented.

Inspired by reigning champions Carlos Ortiz, Gonzalo Piriz, Yazmin Suárez, Gerardo Rada, Gerardo Pias, Franco Micalizzi and Carlos Martínez, participants organized themselves into teams and worked on the challenges presented by the organization: the UP DOWN and RPKI, Events, Mi Lacnic API, and IRR Routing projects. 

After three days during which participants shared their knowledge and ideas and improved on each project, the team led by Gerardo Rada that worked on the IRR Routing challenge won the competition with a total of 76 points. The group led by Carlos Ortiz that focused on the UP/DOWN project obtained 63 points and took second place. The team led by Jazmin Suárez that contributed new ideas for the Mi LACNIC API took third place with 56 points, and the team led by Gonzalo Piriz that worked on the Events project came in fourth with 44 points.

“We worked for a total of 16 hours over the course of three days, along with 40 participants, 38 of whom remained until the end of the activity. This leaves us very happy. We encourage interaction and learning new technologies, and this became one of the major motivators during this Hackathon as attendees discovered how things worked,” said Gerardo Rada, coordinator of the activity.

For the participants, the hackathon turned out to be a great experience that took place in a pleasant and relaxed environment. According to evaluations conducted after the hackathon, participants’ expectations were pleasantly exceeded.

Participants highlighted positive aspects such as the opportunity to share with others from different countries who have different skill sets and experiences. They also stressed that their participation had contributed to their both their personal as well as their professional development thanks to the networking opportunities.

Hackathon Podcast. An experimental podcast titled “Bones Internet Podcast” was created for the promotion and dissemination of this second LACNIC Hackathon. It included interviews with the champions of the prior edition at the beginning, during and at the end of the activity to explain the context of each of their challenges. The goal was to use this space to create audiovisual content to record participants’ experiences at the Hackathon. 

Click here for more information, and listen to the podcast here