To visit Mars — done.
To gather more than 1000 festival guests — done.
To organize fest with friends and raise money on a spilnokosht — done.
The current festival was a new challenge and we understood the importance of teamwork. The idea of remote control of real rovers and passing guests to an unknown location, which can be seen only through the electronic “eye” of their robot, had arisen six months before the festival have been taken place. Besides the idea and the desire, we had nothing else.
We wished to organize the tough competition, to show lots of projects, and to present such prizes which would the competitors to fight for. Therefore, we needed help.
The first thing we have decided to do was to involve the students of the School of Programming Ш++ and hit the mark. The young and progressive guys have shown themselves as strong developers and organizers. Successful completion is absolutely their merit.
Also, we have found a new way to finance the fest and submitted a project to https://biggggidea.com/project/molodizhnij-it-festival-vesna-soft/. Totally was needed 40 thousand hryvnyas for the parts for mars-cars and renting a building. We were writing the posts, telling our friends and relatives about the company, making the gifts for donators. As a result, we have collected this sum! The trust of the people who supported us is absolutely amazing. There was that feeling we were not alone and could do much more!
Concerning the prizes, Internet coverage, and delicious food, we have turned to our friends-partners, and also found new ones! 🙂
Kyivstar, Fayno Market, Onix System, Digital Will, Kinect Pro, Advection.net, 200×300 studio, Footboom, ITVDN, Dynamic Streaming, Global Game Gam are our close friends who have made our dream come true. There was fast Internet at all locations of the festival thanks to the main telecom partner Kyivstar. Participants of the hackathon received a video signal from Mars in time and the guests were sharing their impressions directly and without limits 🙂
The main food partner Fayno Market supplied with snacks all hackathon’s participants and more than 20 teams from all over Ukraine, who have taken part in the exhibition and quest zone. Fruits, sweets and pizzas, it seems that programmers do need nothing else 🙂
Thanks all other partners the winners have got cool prizes. The winner team of the Hakcathon: Kyryl Gavrilenko, Victor Turturika, Yuliya Nosko and Olexandr Gergardt have received the gifts from the telecom partner of the festival, the company Kyivstar — quadcopters to each member of the team. Another drone was presented to the winner of 14 quests.
Regarding the presentation of projects, there were 22 of them in three categories (programming, art/design, robotics) and there were three winners:
– “Programming” has received a set of Samsung S7 + Samsung Gear VR for creating innovations in virtual reality from partners: companies Onix, Advection.NET and the School of Programming Ш++. This prize was received by Euhen Ivanov’s project “Born to drive” — the game-autosimulator with good physics.
– “Art and Design” has received GoPro camera from Kinect.Pro. This prize got the project by Vlad Obach — site “Protect yourself from AIDS”, which contains information about HIV / AIDS.
– “Robotics” has received Dremel (multi-instrument for making ) from Digital Will got Dmytro Kostishin’s project “Air Armwrestling” — the game for the development of lungs.
Read more about the hackathon:
Participants were presented with a research mission, during which it was necessary to control the “rovers” (created at Ш++ robots based on raspberry pi, with a camera and a hand-manipulator). To begin with, it was necessary to establish a communication system with the robots, to fix some errors in the code 🙂 and then move on to the research mission. Among the tasks were to explore the surface (since on our “Mars” the night, the lights on the rover were useful), where the materials with algorithmic tasks were placed, there were also physical quests: to collect soil samples and put them to the laboratory, decipher the diaries of the previous researchers, to discover water and what is more to find an unknown source of radiation and turn it off.
At the end of the hackathon, the four teams have found the source and three of them have touched it. In fact, it is hard to convey the atmosphere of the competition. You should see the photos, you would be surprised 😉
To the majority of the audience of the festival, we offered something unusual. Everyone could compete in 14 tasks. However, there were flying over Ukraine and searching for specific objects, creating virtual reality glasses (Google cardboard), painting a computer game character on a cookie.
At the end of the Vesna-Soft students and scholars could submit their projects. One of the youngest participants, who came onstage with the project, is 8-year-old boy, as the part of the NGO 6 team. Guys have presented a draft program for rescue from sharks and actually sharks. Another participant, the 11-year-old programmer has demonstrated his work, which he had made for the popularization of the programming among peers.
We know that we could do better and we will try to do our best. We have already made the first steps to the all-Ukrainian level and continue to improve ourselves. Our dream is giving young programmers an opportunity to express their talent. Dreams may come true;)
