Halifax Team Wins Grand Prize At Atlantic Lottery Tri-Province Hackathon
MONCTON – A Halifax team consisting of Mark Podrouzek and Evan Wilkinson won the $2,000 grand prize at the Atlantic Lottery Lotto Game Super Hackathon on February 8-10, which happened simultaneously in Halifax, Moncton and Charlottetown.
“This was the first time we’ve done an event like this across three provinces, but we were happy to see how well it can work,” said Michael Sandalis, manager of innovation execution at Atlantic Lottery, in a release. “We were able to increase engagement, participation and overall creative activity by hosting this type of event in more than one province. It was great to expand the hackathon, and definitely something we will consider doing again in the future.”
The event was held in partnership with Volta in Halifax, Venn in Moncton and Startup Zone in Charlottetown. The goal was to design a digital instant game.
“Atlantic Lottery is proud to support innovation in our region,” said Sandalis. “Hackathons are boiling with ideas and are a great place to get your creative juices flowing. Atlantic Lottery is always looking for new ways to improve our products and services, and we like to stay [at] the forefront of things, so this type of partnership was a natural fit.”
A hackathon is an event that usually lasts a few days, where people collaborate to design and develop a new product or service, or come up with solutions to a certain problem. Hackathons are usually held by startups and other businesses to find new, creative ways to solve a problem, or innovate a product or service, in a focused way and in a short time.
Participants come from diverse backgrounds, including graphic designers, artists, programmers, engineers and businesspeople. Some may have created teams before the hackathon, others meet at the event.
For Atlantic Lottery’s hackathon, 62 participants competed over the weekend to build their project and pitch it to a panel of judges for a chance to win one of three prizes per location and a chance to compete for the overall grand prize.
Podrouzek and Wilkinson’s product, Escape, also won second place in the Halifax location. Their game allows players to chose pathways or directions towards a potential prize.
Podrouzek, a student at St. Mary’s University, isn’t new to hackathons.
“You never know what is going to happen. Part of the fun is the nature of doing something in such a short time. I love how the crunch influences the creative process, and how the product transforms from your initial idea,” he said.
In Moncton, the first prize winner was a team consisting of Frederic Laforge and Philippe Bélanger. Their game, called Play-it Forward, combined lottery games and giving back to charity.
“The event was a good way to explore creative ways to make a game for a new generation of players,” said Laforge. “I love participating in these events, it’s creative and very energetic.”
Some of the participants’ ideas will be posted to a test site and tested with a panel of players. Sandalis said if the response is “really good,” the idea could be developed further and eventually have a spot on Atlantic Lottery’s website.
“Through these hackathons, we get some really great insight into what players might want to see in our games, and in our products,” Sandalis said in the release. “The participants completely connect with the concept of looking at things from a different perspective, and then figuring out how to use that mindset to improve a process. We were impressed with so many of the neat, outside the box ideas presented at the end of the weekend.”