Impressions from a Crowdhackathon
Last weekend, October 1-2, Crowdhackathon #insurance was organized by Crowdpolicy at Innovathens in the Technopolis of the Municipality of Athens.
The goal of this hackathon was to develop applications and drive business innovation in the insurance sector. To put it simply, we had to create anything that would be useful to an insurance company.
The Team
At the event, we participated with Dimitris Barbakos, Stavros Economidis, and Stavros Tsourlidakis, representing the T.E.I. of Central Greece: Decision Systems Group, through which most of us had met.
As the results showed, our team worked perfectly together, producing DaaM, a platform for rewarding drivers from insurance companies, which won first place and €2,000.
DaaM
The Driving Analysis and Monetization (DaaM) platform is an application that collects data from vehicles, either through mobile phones or, even better, through OBD devices and general IoT devices. It analyzes this data to determine if the driver is driving safely, economically, and ecologically or dangerously.
With this conclusion, we can suggest to the insurance company to lower premiums for good drivers, reward them with gifts, and generally make efforts to retain them as customers.
Additionally, the platform includes the ability to add prizes (TVs, phones) from insurance companies for their clients and a ranking system to categorize clients.
Impressions
This was my third hack event and the second most attended. Organizationally, the effort was satisfactory. It was clear that the team who organized it were experienced and had paid attention to details.
In terms of food, we were well covered. In the morning, we had as much coffee as we wanted until noon when the pizzas arrived, and we snacked throughout the day. It was standard food for such events.
The major downside was that we were kicked out at 11 PM on Saturday and had to return at 9 AM on Sunday. Generally, in two-day events, you don’t kick people out. You don’t know where they’ve come from, and it disrupts the flow and productivity of the team. I hope this doesn’t happen again.
Additionally, we had two meetings with mentors and judges before the final presentation. In these meetings, instead of suggesting improvements, we were put on the spot and bombarded with questions (30-40 people in a room) which we didn’t have time to answer before another question was asked. These meetings didn’t impact the final judgment, but the aggressiveness of the questions might have had a negative effect on someone.
Although I focused more on the negatives, the overall impression of the event is positive, and I will definitely attend another Crowdpolicy hackathon in the future. You should too.