This year's hackathon, which openedon November 15, 2021, had over 190 teams from local schools participate. Huawei'sSpark Hackathon is designed to equip participants with cloud training,practical experience, and hands-on mentorship from key industry leaders. InFebruary, all 450 participants were invited to attend the five-day HuaweiCertified ICT Associate (HCIA) Cloud Service Certification Program where they receivedfirst-hand training on cutting-edge public cloud service concepts and values.In the lead up to this week's event, finalists also had the opportunity todemonstrate their mastery of Huawei Cloud GaussDB (for MySQL) database serviceand features and deploy their solutions on the Huawei Cloud Platform.
Thishackathon is just one part of Huawei’s planned USD100 million investment intothe wider Asia Pacific start-up ecosystem. Foo Fang Yong, Chief ExecutiveOfficer of Huawei International explained the company's interest in the programby saying, “Cultivating a sustainable pipeline of agile and dynamic tech talentin Singapore and the region remains a key focus for Huawei and Huawei Cloud.The start-up ecosystem in Singapore is dynamic, growing faster than ever withnew players, investments, and partnerships.”
Thehackathon's final event was held at the Equarius Hotel at Resorts World Sentosawith the finalist teams coming from Nanyang Technological University (NTU),National University of Singapore (NUS), and five other local educationalinstitutes. The winning teams each received up to USD15,000 in prize money, andpotential job opportunities with Huawei and Spark Program portfolio companiessuch as Sentient, Scantist, PI Exchange, and Morpheus Labs.
Notablepitches at the event included the Deaftalk solution designed by NUS School ofComputing’s Team, which focused on building resources for Auditory VerbalTherapists to help hearing-impaired children. The team is the first to successfullytranslate and combine existing research with the International PhoneticAlphabet (IPA) into a single app that will help children practice pronunciationthrough tutorials, gamification, and 3D pronunciation modelling.
TeamNozema also produced an app called Elderberry provides a comprehensive set ofonline resources for caregivers to help track, monitor, and customizehealthcare for senior citizens. The application is a significant upgrade fromexisting solutions, enabling caregivers to leverage data-powered, predictivemedicine.
LeoJiang, Chief Digital Officer of Huawei Cloud APAC, said at the event,“Start-ups often struggle because of the shortage of developer talents. Huaweihas a responsibility, as one of the largest tech companies in the world, to bridgethis tech talent gap by providing opportunities to young aspiring entrepreneursand developers. In our experience, exposure at an early stage benefits bothstudents and startups. It connects startups to future hires, and students topotential mentors. It also helps kick start these young people's careers by helpingbuild relationships between talent and companies. We have already seen thepositive effects programs like the hackathon have on participants.”
Whilecommenting on Huawei's long-term commitment supporting the Singaporegovernment’s efforts to cultivate deep tech skill sets and empower the nextgeneration of tech talents, Foo added, “We recognize that the success of thefuture economy relies heavily on technological innovation. To facilitate thisgrowth, we are honored to work with local educational institutes and lend ourresources and expertise to technology enthusiasts, talented developers, andaspiring entrepreneurs, championing the growth of tech talents and advancingstart-ups.”
Formore details about the Huawei Cloud Spark Hackathon Singapore 2022, pleaseclick here: https://huawei.agorize.com/en/challenges/hackathonsg2022
Forthe full list of participating teams, please click here: https://huawei.agorize.com/en/challenges/hackathonsg2022/teams
1. Leo Jiang, CDO of Huawei Cloud APAC on stage
2. Top 3 winner teams on stage
