IBM/Sobeys Hackathon @ SMU

A Retail Hackathon: 

All of us purchase a huge variety of items from retail outlets: clothing, gifts, and of course, food.  With every grocery cart filled with fresh vegetables, cereal, and cans of soup, comes an incredible array of point of sale, services, supply chain, and customer data.  

Sobeys - Helping Canadians Eat Better, Feel Better, Do Better - has compiled a huge, anonymized retail data set that participants will use for this analytics focused hackathon.  

During the kick-off on October 2, teams will be introduced to retail challenges and data use-cases from Sobeys.  Participants will then learn about analytics and marketing techniques that will help them delve into the data.  

Experts from IBM will provide access to IBM Bluemix, a next generation innovation platform, and provide tutorials on how to use Bluemix to create apps for the competition. Participants will also be introduced to IBM Watson, which can help teams find insights where no one ever thought to look before, using advanced analytics.

We provide the data, software and training -  you generate the ideas.  

Competition Categories

1. Retail Insights

2. BlueMix and Watson technologies

3. Business Innovations

Over $9,000 in prizes will be awarded to the most innovative solutions.  The winning team will also be invited to a 2-day Bluemix Garage Design Thinking Workshop with Sobeys and IBM, valued at $15,000.  The workshop will focus on further developing the winning team's concept. 

Judging Criteria:

1. Useful and intuitive app design

2. Robustness (does not crash)

3. Technical complexity

- good use of general technology (database, web, mobile, cloud)

- use of Bluemix and Watson (especially for IBM prizes) 

 4. Retail Value

- product assortment and merchandizing decisions

- customer behavior

5. Business case

Eligibility

The hackathon is open to all current university students and recent graduates (graduated since May 2013).   We strongly encourage collaborations between developers, designers, and business students.  We hope to see students from all Nova Scotia post secondary institutions participating!   

Schedule: 

October 2 2015 

• Registration:  9:30am
• Tutorials: 10:00am - 12:30pm  (Please bring your own computer)
• Lunch:   12:30pm - 1:30pm
• Tutorials: 1:30pm - 3:00pm

October 9 2015

• Team Pitches - Round One Judging:  10:00am - 12:00pm
• Lunch:  12:00pm - 12:45pm
• Finalists - Round Two Judging:  1:00-1:45
• Awards:  2:00pm - 2:30pm