How We Won a Global Hackathon
William Powell reflects on how his training at Makers helped his team during a high-profile international coding event
In June, Tesco colleagues and suppliers from the Czech Republic, India, Poland and the UK came together to compete in the eighth annual Tesco Global Hackathon.
One of those teams had two Makers alumni in it (George Sykes and William Powell). We love to hear how our alumni are doing out in the world, so when we got this message from William, we decided to investigate further.
“I thought this might be interesting for you to hear more about… it’s a great reflection on Makers!”
William was in the April 2018 cohort then started working at Tesco through Makers. He now works for Tesco full-time.
The premise of the hackathon
This was a global competition. Teams had 24 hours to come up with an innovative technology solution to one of these business challenges faced by Tesco:
“How can we use our customers’ data to serve them better?
How can we simplify in-store operations/routines?
How can we help our customers to be more eco-friendly?
How can we optimise our transport either for distribution or for GHS delivery?
Come up with an idea that will save the business over £10m in year one (must be quantifiable).
Come up with an idea that will generate over £20m revenue in year one (must be quantifiable).”
William tells us that it all started with a brainstorm session.
“Everyone in the team came up with all the ideas they could think of,” he says.
“We ended with a really big range of ideas which we whittled down to our top 6 in a meeting. We went through these ideas and listed pros and cons and challenges associated with them, then agreed to do further research on them.”
On further research, a few of the ideas were discounted because they were too complex or had already been implemented by someone else in the past.
In the end the group voted on several ideas, and the top pick was NutriScan: an app that customers could use to scan products to see if they meet their needs, particularly in terms of dietary intolerances or lifestyle choices. If a selected product does not, the app would suggest an alternative product.
The challenges
“We’re a back end team so we didn’t have any front end engineers with us. NutriScan is an Android app, and none of us had ever worked on Android in the past,” William says.
“Because of this we were learning new technologies from scratch at the same time as developing our app. We were working with a lot of time pressure (24 hours to complete the project). Working in a small team of 5 people, with completely new technologies and time pressure is what made it feel like a Makers project!”
The Hackathon culminated in the finalist teams presenting in front of 500 people, with the presentations judged by the CTO, CIO and a couple of others.
Against about 20 other teams, Nutriscan won in a very close contest, just 15 points separated the teams in the final count.
“Since it felt quite a lot like a Makers project, I’m sure our experience from Makers was a big factor in us managing to win,” William says.
A message from Makers
We’re very aware that too much pressure can be counter-productive. If you push yourself too hard for too long, you’re likely to burn out. It’s a dangerous trap prevalent at many coding bootcamps, which are designed to be an intense learning experience.
This is why we have a holistic coaching department on hand to help our students to hack their emotional intelligence as well as their technical coding skills.
We also know that part of what makes our developers world-class is the ability to balance unavoidable intensity with an acute self-awareness.
William is a fantastic example of someone who made the most of his Makers experience (which includes learning to work under pressure, learning to work in a team, and learning to present). Like all other Makers, he completed a Final Project for Demo Day.
We’re very proud of William and the rest of their team. Tesco is sending them to Portugal to attend Web Summit in November. We hope you have an excellent time, William!
