Hackathon SAP Connect 2017

[SamiLechner]

Part of the SAP Connect 2017 (SAP’s annual summit for partners in Austria, Germany and Switzerland with more than 1300 participants) which took place in Francfort this week, an Hackathon was organized.



The only requirements we set for the teams where the following:

• Teams of 3 to 4 members with expert knowledge in native Apple IOS development


• Good understanding of APIs (ODATA and REST)

It’s worth to mention from the 5 participating teams, the vast majority is currently not SAP partner. Most of them did not have any knowledge of the SAP Cloud Platform before today!

Here a short summary of the events from the Hackathon at the SAP Connect 2017

• 09:00 kick off Hackathon


• 09:45 Rules off the next 36 hours have been explained


• 09:55 Challenge is understood


• 10:00 accelerated Design thinking starts


• 10:15 Uses cases defined


• 11:00 Navigation Concepts completed


• 12:18 Screen Mockups are ready


• 12:33 Lunch -> the last “normal” meal for some for the next 36 hours


• 13:07 Knowledge pressure injection on the SAP Cloud Platform services for Machine Learning, Mobile and IoT


• 14:39 Successful creation of first device in SAP Cloud Platform IoT


• 14:02 Hackfestival starts


• 14:42 first Team successfully connects to the SAP Mobile services via the SAP Cloud Platform iOS SDK for iOS


• 15:00 First Team has its IoT demo created


• 16:19 all teams are now downloading Data through the SAP Cloud Platform mobile services


• 17:15 Fiori for iOS Design Stencils are heavily used by designers of the hackathon teams


• 17:42 food station is completely out of chocolate and gummi bears


• 18:33 augmented reality is measuring distance from Table to Coffee machine


• 18:45 Leonardo seems to have done predictive analyses. The Leonardo Coaches double their staff on the event


• 19:05 working dinner -> pure carb loading to keep sugar levels in productive range


• 19:18 Successful ingestion of IoT sensor data into SAP Cloud Platform IoT


• 19:40 First custom icons requested and shortly after that delivered by the design coaches


• 20:04 Global Design Team in Palo Alto involved to provide latest design resources and specific guidelines


• 20:15 mobile coach pulls phone joker with a call to Canada to connect offline expert with participant


• 20:28 Rumour that the food station has been refilled with Candy turn out to be true


• 21:12 First Team is visualizing Data from an IoT sensor which is connected through the SAP Cloud Platform IoT service in a mobile app


• 21:27 All teams are successfully using offline oData in their mobile apps


• 22:18 Fridge is out of Mate Tee-> Coffee Machine has to compensate now to keep supply of caffeine constant


• 22:45 IoT emergency situation requires Online support from remote experts in Dresden


• 22:45 Pizzas and beer arrive


• 23:09 Fridge gets refilled with Mate Tea. Question comes up why catering team is not using Leonardo and IoT to monitor and service the Mate Tea and Soda supply


• 23:08 Pizzas are gone


• 23:16 Idea comes up to use IoT to measure the temperatures of each beer bottle as they are untouched


• 23:49 Lonely Developer is roaming through convention centre in search for an icon


• 00:08 Teams are evaluating to use SAP Content 2 GO for a second persona


• 00:24 Teams are loosing more and more participants


• 00:58 Coaching team presence is at a bare minimum supporting teams


• 02:01 One Team report an Incident with the Backend


• 02:02 Coaches respond to the Backend incident. But recognize fast that external help is needed


• 02:03 Coaches are suspecting High caffeine levels and missing sleep to the reason that a developer completely wiped the Data of the Demo Backend


• 02:05 SAP team in Shanghai gets involved to investigate the incident and restore the Demo Backed


• 02:08 team can continue to work demo backend is available again


• 03:28 last coach leaves the convention centre, unsure if he will ever find his hotel


• 03:49 Security staff of the convention centre records the last participants exiting the Hacker Zone


• 06:38 First Coach are testing the functionality of coffee machine in the Hacker Zone


• 07:15 Question from event staff come up what the coaches did with the participants. No participant has jet returned to the Hacker Zone


• 07:22 First Participants are showing up again.


• 07:48 Mobile coaches are predicting high demand of Icons in near future


• 07:52 Design Team reacts and orders more Whiteboards and markers


• 08:29 Event staff record with relief that all participants have returned to event healthy


• 10:09 Mobile coaches are roaming the convention centre in search for work teams are working focused and completely independent


• 10:12 Design Coaches start challenging the Information architecture and app navigation of all apps. Big UX improvements achieved through quick app structure tuning


• 10:34 First custom designed Cards with SAP Content to GO are being send by participant


• 10:38 First custom identity applied by defining unique branding for the UIs


• 10:55 SAP Expert from London helps remotely to debug a mobile incident


• 10:58 Turns out Mobile Coaches also humans. Reason for mobile incident was wrong wifi network.


• 11:03 Designers helping first teams to polish the UIs


• 11:34 Participants now understand the advantage of offline in mobile apps. Event network is trying to handle the 1300 + participants of SAP Connect which results in slow data access.


• 12:09 Event staff informs about food on various levels of the convention centre


• 13:03 Vital signs of some coaches and developers are critical


• 13:38 Mobile Coaches demand teams to have a stable branch for the approaching end of the hackathon and start preparing final build


• 14:10 Design experts start supporting the app teams by giving advice for the pitches to sell their solution along with the user story


• 14:21 first team reports a final build for the mobile app


• 14:49 eleven minutes before deadline all teams have deployed a mobile app for the final Demo


• 15:00 official end of hackathon and Demo


• 15:45 Winner is Team HappCow


• 17:30 Winning Team demos their Solution on Stage in front of 1300 + Participants at the evening Keynote.


• 20:00 Sleep deprived developers are spotted at the party

look at all the great results from the teams neusta, calatena, incloud, brightSolutions and actidoo

more to follow!