Hacktitude inter-university hackathon to happen on January 22

99x, a technology company cocreating well-engineered, innovative digital products for the S c a n d i n avian marke t , announced the launch of ‘Hacktitude’, an inter-university hackathon geared at grooming talented young people to be industry-ready upon graduation.

‘ Hacktitude’ will focus on exposing them to technical challenges that drive participants to develop ‘ productiongrade’ code. The sprint will take place on January 22 next year, and the winners will walk away with top honours, cash prizes and job opportunities.

Launched on December 1, the competition has already received more than 100 registrations from undergraduate teams across the island.

“The uniqueness about Hacktitude is that participants will get the opportunity to work on a near real-world project on a machine of their choice and a development environment they are comfortable in. It will also be excellent exposure for participants to problems faced in real client projects, allowing them to develop their industry readiness before entering the job market,” 99x Chief Product Officer Chatura de Silva said.

‘ Hacktitude’ aims to push the boundaries of what is possible in hackathons. It allows candidates to use any IDE or tools of their preference and will be given a near real- world project to work on for nine hours, consisting of a wide mix of feature implementations, bug fixes, improvements and algorithmic problems.

Looking to build stronger connections with academia, a compulsory requirement of each participating team is the inclusion of an academic coach, a university faculty member who will mentor the teams throughout the competition.

The coach too will walk away with a MacBook Pro and other prizes, and a trophy for the winning university. 99x aims to work with these coaches in the long term to bring about stronger university-industry collaborations and improve the quality of graduates gearing to become IT leaders and professionals of the future.

Registrations for Hacktitude are still open on a first come, first serve basis until January 7. For more information and to apply, please visit hacktitude.io.