By Victor Zhiltsov, Senior Director Visa Developer.
In mid-April, we had an opportunity to participate in a hackathon. This year Visa sponsored the hackathon at the Emerge America event – a leading technology event in Miami that includes a lot of developers from the Latin America region. As part of that, Visa presented teams with a challenge to enhance the mobile consumer experience for Visa cardholders using at least one of two APIs, Visa Direct (card to card transfers) or Consumer Transaction Controls (allows user to customize when and where cards can be used). Over 46 teams participated over the weekend developing proposals and concepts.
I live-blogged the whole event . . .
The night before
The event officially starts on Friday evening, so we need to catch the presentation by Emerge and figure out the format for the next couple days. The Idea Center is packed, looks like couple hundred people, our hosts tell us that a lot more will come in tomorrow. Emerge, other financial services companies, and Visa are up on stage, going over the competition remarks. All speeches are very short and to the point, no slides. All is done in a little over an hour, we are told to come back on Saturday at eight AM.
Arriving
There is a long line at the Idea Center. Developers are bringing in carts full of gear – huge monitors, keyboards, boxes full of wires, and something that looks like serious audio equipment (wonder what for…). Some are carrying in pillows and sleeping bags – it will be a long night.
Kick off
The room is barely large enough to hold everybody, by the last count there are over 300 participants in 46 teams. A few extra rooms are set up to take in the overflow. Companies give more short and pointed remarks, and we are introduced as Visa experts and start the countdown. A huge digital clock is projected on the wall at the end of the room, it reads 23:59:59. Twenty four hours to go.
Next 24 hours
We are hanging out at the back of the room waiting for questions. A couple developers approach us, but the questions are pretty vague – clearly everybody is in the ideation stage and the actual hacking is yet to start. A couple of hours in – the floodgates are starting to open, and there is a line of developers with questions, mostly on how Visa APIs work and how to connect to the sandbox. Some developers are coming with laptops, so we need to sit down and look at what they are trying to do. All kinds of different developer environments. We keep asking: ‘did you run through the example on the site? It really is the quickest way to get started’. Of course they haven’t – too little time. We end up running through our ‘getting started’ process step by step with a number of developers, folks are getting connected and moving forward, the progress is impressive. After about four hours the second wave of questions comes in, now it’s all about sample data and API payloads. Loads of repeating questions, so we decide to hold a Q&A session, to get them all in one go.
It is now around midnight, and we get yet another wave of questions. Strangely, this wave is again about how to connect to the sandbox. Most likely people are done with the prototypes and are now trying to go for the real data – good strategy.
The 24 hours are up. Iron Hack runs the countdown – the hacking is done. The energy in the room is off the charts, despite the sleepless night. Good place to shoot an energy drink commercial.
And the winners are…
Time for presentations. Because of the number of participating teams the presentations are divided into three streams, the idea is to select the top three teams from each stream, and then to have the finals with the top nine. Format for the finals and for the semifinals is the same – three minutes to present. No Q&A time for the semifinals. This is very hard, some teams are struggling to fit into the three minutes, and the time limits are strictly enforced. After the semis, the top nine go onto the big stage and run their pitches again, to compete for the top spot. Here is what the top three came up with:
- Parental Controls / Allowance Tool – a pair of apps, one designed for parents and the other for the child, that helps distribute allowances onto a card and controls its usage based on parent-defined parameters. It also includes options that allow kids to gain more money by doing optional tasks
- Parental Controls –an app that allows a parent to place controls on a card provided to a child
- Split Transactions – functionality that allows consumers to split payments with other consumers at the time of checkout at an ecommerce site
Overall, great hacks. The concept of a ‘kid’s card’ should resonate well with banks, and when it is paired up with a parent’s app to monitor spending and reward kids for good behavior -- this is something that consumers might find interesting as well.
It was great to see that the local tech community was really eager to embrace the challenge as demonstrated by the range and quality of ideas presented.
A successful trip
The plan is to invite some of these participants to Visa so that folks can get acquainted with their solutions and provide tips and guidance so the teams can continue to iterate. We’d like to showcase these participants to Visa clients later this summer.
Learning from developers, seeing Hacks in progress, hearing great ideas and on the way back to the airport we took a detour and stopped by the beach – how great is that? See you at the next Hackathon!
