AWS starts Hackdays to drive innovation in PH

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Thanks for reading. I’m going back to the editing room now and continue my work AMAZON Web Services Inc. (AWS), an Amazon. com company, is helping to empower a community of ASEAN builders with skills in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) services on AWS, with the launch of its annual education and hackathon event, AWS Hackdays 2018. AWS Hackdays provide developers with opportunities to enhance their skillsets by building innovative AI and ML- based solutions. By harnessing AWS technologies, the solutions created are seen to potentially contribute to positive social and economic results in the region, and inspire the next generation of developers.

AWS Hackdays will be held in the Philippines on 14 July 2018. AWS Hackdays will also run in Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand on selected dates between 27 June and 17 July 2018.

“The AWS Hackdays underscore our commitment to give developers at startups through to large enterprises the tools and technology they need to create forwardthinking solutions that will enhance our quality of life, build real life problem solving solutions,” according to Nick Walton, managing director for Asean, AWS. “For instance, Sunday Insurance, an insurance technology startup, uses AWS to run machine learning software to provide customized and real time insurance for customers, and increase human productivity. This year, we’re excited to see how participants will use AI and ML services to bring their ideas to life.”

During the 12- hour hackathon, participants will have access to AWS services including Amazon SageMaker to build, train, and deploy ML models; Amazon Polly to build speech- enabled applications; and Amazon Lex to build chatbots.

As part of this year’s competition, participants are invited to form teams of two to four people, and build solutions around the topics of Transportation, Media & Entertainment, e- Commerce, and FinTech. Participants will tackle real-world problems faced by industry players by creating practical yet innovative AI and ML solutions. AWS Solution Architects will be present to guide participants as they build successful projects.

One winning team from each country will compete in the grand finale of AWS Hackdays 2018 in Jakarta, Indonesia on 19–20 September 2018. The pre-selection judging criteria includes innovativeness and feasibility of the idea, potential impact of the application in solving problems, and how well the proposed application integrates with AWS services. The winning team of the AWS Hackdays Grand Finale in Jakarta, will win an all- expense trip to AWS re:Invent 2018 in Las Vegas.

Students, data scientists, researchers, and developers who are up to the challenge will be joining the event.

“For almost ten years, we have enabled the success of developers and the startup community across the region, by providing access to AWS Cloud Services to build innovative new products, services, and highly successful businesses such as Grab, iflix, Halodoc, Supahands, Coins. ph, and Amanotes,” said Walton.