A few weeks have passed since my return from HackZürich 2023, and I’m still excited. This marked my third consecutive year at the event, and it was nothing short of spectacular. Each year, HackZürich manages to strike a perfect balance between learning, innovation, and a unique magic touch in this hackathon.

Diving into HackZürich 2023

HackZürich found a new home at Halle 550 this year, which couldn’t have been a better fit. The venue provided the ideal backdrop for a weekend of innovation and collaboration. What’s more, we had the opportunity to explore the Digital Festival, adding an extra layer of inspiration to the event.
The organizers left no stone unturned in ensuring a seamless experience. From the events kicking off right on time to the fantastic spread of food (think pizza, snacks, and vegan meals), not to mention the endless coffee supply, it was clear that the organizers and a group of volunteers had everything perfectly planned and brought to us like true superheroes. As for the challenges, 13 intriguing workshops from companies like Migros, Zürich, Siemens, Optiver, Logitec and Sika tested our problem-solving skills.
It’s worth mentioning the diversity among participants — 500 hackers with 64 different nationalities came together to tackle these challenges. While seeing such a diverse group was heartening, there’s always room for improvement, especially regarding gender diversity (with just a 30% women participation rate).

My Team for the Weekend

One of the joys of returning to HackZürich was reconnecting with participants from previous years and, of course, forging new connections. This year, our group came together as a mixture of old and new relationships, and it was a match made in Hackathon Heaven. Bar, a connection from last year, was the driving force behind our full-stack development while contributing to data analysis. Sahar and Neta worked their data science magic with the datasets while Natayra and I took on the front end. Working with this talented team was a privilege, and I am lucky to have crossed paths with them.

Our Project: Sustainaplate

Our journey at HackZürich 2023 led us to the Migros challenge called “Sustainable Shopping and Travel — Better Choices with AI.” The challenge intrigued us to harness Artificial Intelligence’s boundless potential to encourage consumers toward more sustainable shopping choices.

For this challenge, we created Sustainaplate — a tool that empowers users to make sustainable choices while cooking and shopping. Here is how it works: with Sustainaplate, you can easily list your ingredients using natural language. The app helps whether you have specific dietary preferences or other requirements. It provides personalized recipe recommendations based on your ingredients, nutritional needs and tastes. Moreover, you can seamlessly add the recipe’s ingredients to your cart for convenient online ordering or in-store pickup at Migros. Sustainaplate empowers you to cook sustainably, reducing food waste and enjoying eco-conscious meals in the comfort of your kitchen.

Unlock sustainable shopping with AI-powered Sustainaplate — a recipe hub and shopping assistant guiding eco-friendly choices.

We designed Sustainaplate as a website that can become a mobile app in the future. Our technology relies on a smart system that uses AI to make everything work smoothly. We created a unique way of organizing information called a knowledge base index, and we use advanced AI tools like Vector Database with Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) to help with things like finding images and data.

We used special tools like FastAPI for the behind-the-scenes stuff and React for the parts you see on the screen to make the website user-friendly and easy to use. We also added MaterialUI to create an aesthetic look and match Migros’ style.

We built a system to get all the information about recipes and sustainability and show it to the users quickly. We looked very carefully at the info Migros gave us, and we used an AI algorithm called Meta Llama2 Large-language-model (LLM) to help us make recommendations. This algorithm understands the users’ ingredients and suggests more sustainable recipes.

In simple terms, we made a website that can become a mobile app later. We used AI tools to make everything work smoothly and look good. We analyzed the information Migros gave us to help users find new recipes while being eco-friendly.

You can explore the complete technical details of our solution in this in-depth project description or look at this case study to learn more about the UI Design of the project.

Celebrating Achievements and Learning

HackZürich 2023 was an event of remarkable statistics:

• 109 projects submitted across the 13 challenges
• Approximately 20,000 hours of collective coding effort
• A whopping 2,700 cups of coffee consumed

While we didn’t bring home any trophies, we gained invaluable knowledge from the challenge, had a ton of fun, and cherished the memories created along the way.

Summing it Up

Reflecting on the weekend, I’m grateful for all the opportunities it offered. Beyond coding and problem-solving, HackZürich provided a space to meet inspiring individuals in the tech industry, connect with companies offering job opportunities, participate in enriching workshops, and immerse ourselves in the Digital Festival’s wonders. Most importantly, it was a chance to learn, grow, and put our skills to the test. HackZürich 2023 was more than just a hackathon; it was a transformative experience. I can’t wait to sign up for HackZürich 2024.

Let’s connect!

If my writing piqued your curiosity, let’s connect on social media and explore more. Check out my projects on my website, too. I’m always excited to connect with fellow tech enthusiasts and share our passion for innovation.

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Reflecting on the electrifying experience of my third HerHackathon, I’m eager to share a vibrant story that captures the essence of this transformative event. Having participated in the previous two editions, I thought I knew what to expect. Still, this in-person edition surpassed all expectations, immersing me in an environment of support, collaboration, and empowerment.

Background and Technical Details

HerHackathon, a rallying call for women in tech, marked its third year with a significant shift — transitioning from an entirely virtual setting to an inspiring on-site experience. With the enchanting atmosphere of the Mannheim Baroque Palace from July 7th to 9th, the event was a beacon of opportunity for women in tech. A diverse selection of over 250 women from 50 different nationalities gathered, united by their passion for tech and a shared commitment to change. With companies like Freudenberg, ING, John Deere, Schwarz, Bayer, and Beiersdorf offering captivating challenges, the stage was set for innovation.

My Dream Team

My journey during this HerHackathon was set with the Beiersdorf challenge — a quest to redefine the role of skin in menstrual health. The organisers created teams to ensure that all roles were covered in every team. So I was put into a team with two familiar faces, Emine and Öykü from last year (I remembered their fantastic project from last year), along with Harini and Iman, whom I have just met. Beiersdorf, our challenge setter, provided unparalleled support. From prompt answers to our queries to having Sophia from Beiersdorf dedicatedly assist us throughout the weekend (she also supplied us with unlimited amounts of sweets and encouragement), we were fueled by a collaborative spirit that knew no bounds.

Our Solution

Our solution, called SPHERE, was the perfect example of how effective collaboration and innovation can be. In just 48 hours, we created an empowering web and mobile app to enhance well-being during the menstrual cycle, explicitly emphasising skin care. Similar to Stack Overflow, but more like a virtual haven where women could share experiences, seek answers, and find personalised product recommendations based on their unique cycle, SPHERE encapsulated the essence of women supporting women.
Apart from the technological success, the HerHackathon left us with enduring memories of unity and friendship. Everywhere we turned, we felt a sense of supporting each other. When I realised I had forgotten my travel adapter, Marleen from another team offered her help to get me one — a simple example of the unwavering support that defined the entire weekend.

You can explore the complete details of our solution in this in-depth case study.

The Takeaway

The entire weekend felt like a dream realised! Being surrounded by women collaborating on challenges to make the world better while receiving support and encouragement from the organisers was genuinely fortunate. I am lucky to have such a supportive team; I even contributed to our solution’s design with Öykü despite not having extensive experience in that area. My team’s empowering atmosphere and encouragement taught me much over the weekend. I am genuinely proud of what we achieved. And let’s not forget the incredible women I met during those days — every individual was incredibly supportive!
The driving force behind the event, Isabel Fienhold, who facilitated the whole event, fostered growth and connection. The head of the judging panel was Dr Franziska Brantner, the Parliamentary State Secretary at the Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection, who eloquently championed women in tech, emphasising that strong women make strong economies. Observing remarkable women serving as challenge setters for their respective companies and exemplifying successful figures in the tech field was genuinely inspiring. It came just at the right time for me.

My heart brims with gratitude for this extraordinary experience. Every connection forged, every challenge surmounted, and every woman uplifted has etched an indelible mark on my journey. As I look ahead, I’m armed with new skills, renewed passion, and an unshakable commitment to forging a path for myself and others in the tech realm. With this experience as my compass, I march forward, resolute in my purpose — empowering, uplifting, and creating. Thank you, HerHackathon, for igniting this flame.

Let’s connect!

If you enjoyed my writing, I’d love to connect with you and share more of my work. You can find me on social media or check out my other projects on my website.

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Nice surprises

Similarly to last year, the organisation was superb. We got all the essential details just on time; the events started on time, we had (more than) enough food and a great selection of companies to entertain us, and to answer all our questions (and to supply us with plantly of goodies). In addition, the social media team captured the event's essence and gave a voice to the hackers and exhibitors. I had a fantastic time with co-hackers, helping each other and having fun.

What I was thrilled to see was some changes compared to last year, small details representing significant changes:

• there was healthy food, too; most of the food was vegetarian/vegan, and the portions were just right
• there were a few dogs that visited the event (not only Boston Dynamics' Spot robot one but real ones too!)
• there were many kids during the day

These things would not come to mind initially when thinking about hackathons, but I think it is great that an event like this is open to everyone.

My Team

This year, there was a Discord server for information and communication with hackers. I "met" Bar a week earlier on that server. He and his colleagues from IBM were looking for other people to team up with. That was perfect for me and my colleague from Intersys. It was also an ideal combination of skills:

• Eli — Data Scientist
• Neta — Data Scientist
• Tamara — Back-End Engineer
• Bar — Full-Stack Engineer
• Myself — Front-End Engineer

Our Project

We chose to tackle the challenge from Migros, which was about building supply chain resilience. An actual and vital topic. After understanding the issue's complexity, I understand the need for stability in the supply chain (and since then, I have appreciated the packed shelves in stores!). But we like to be challenged, so we went for it!

We created a web app called Better Chain that combines supply chain shipping routes and various data from public sources (weather information, news articles) to detect issues during shipping. The app also orders the data systematically and represents it visually, with colour indicators for easy decision-making. You can see the Dashboard of the app below.

We put in use all we could. We used machine learning algorithms and APIs to identify risks that can occur during shipping. We used Python on the back-end side. I was working on the front-end with React. We also integrated Components from IBM's Carbon Design System, which I used for the first time and loved! Below you can see our project video.

My winning of the weekend

Besides all the good memories that I am richer after the weekend, I can say that this was more than just a hackathon for me. As I continue my transition into the world of software development, I still try to accumulate new experiences for learning. And this weekend, I had the chance to create an application from start to finish. I saw the whole development process. We collaborated and iterated through ideas and implemented changes right away. These insights I gained would have taken many months to experience at any organisation.

So thank you so much to the volunteers and organisers at HackZurich! You are helping me learn and to make my dreams come true. I also want to thank my team, Better Chain, for all the support, pair-coding, early-morning video shootings, and endless ideas to help each other. You are indeed a fantastic team! And finally, I would like to thank my colleagues at Intersys for all the encouraging and kind words and for supporting our participation. And a special thank you to TeamCreate for tolerating my tiredness after the hackathon!

On the last weekend of June, 500+ women with diverse skill sets and backgrounds joined the HerHackathon, an online hackathon for women by women. And I am glad I was one of them, as it was a next-level experience!

HerHackathon is a three-and-a-half-day online event. Besides a lot of fun and learning opportunities, its primary goals are to highlight the under-representation of women in the tech industry and the need for a more inclusive design of products and services. It was the second edition of this hackathon, with more participants and geographical reach than last year.

The agenda covered all the “basics” of a hackathon: networking sessions to connect with fellow hackers, speed-dating sessions with companies for career-builders, job postings of companies to find new talents, a nice price pool for the winners, and workshops for technical- and soft-skills as well.

For Women By Women

What really made a difference is that this hackathon was designed with women in mind. Starting with the schedule, I was happy to see the virtual yoga session and a panel discussion on the topic of Inspiring Empowered Leadership. In addition, the organization was top-notch; not only was everything on time and communicated well but who doesn’t love when the handout style for the weekend matches the colour scheme of the slack workplace?! Not to mention the frequent reminders to connect, have fun and support each other.

An Exceptional Experience

What most mattered to me during the event was the environment the organizers created for us. It was where we felt supported and dared to ask and try out new things—the organizers set up the teams to cover all skills needed for a project. There were regularly A&Q sessions with the challenge setters, they answered all of our questions, and with enormous flexibility, the organizers provided us with everything we needed to succeed. During this weekend, I have met first-timers, people with no-coding experience at all, career-changers and re-starters (like myself), and we were all in this together, gaining new experiences, learning new skills and seeing examples of women succeeding in the tech industry. So that is the hackathon experience that I would prescribe for everyone!

The Challenges

The Challenge Setters of this hackathon were from various industries across Germany: Accenture, Allianz, BASF, ING, Merck, Schwarz IT, and ZF Group. Their challenges were current real-life issues, such as reducing the CO2 footprint, knowledge gap in investment opportunities, or ethical artificial intelligence. I was working on the Merck challenge, which assessed the issue of lack of diversity in clinical trial participants.

A Weekend’s Work

Our team created a Web App called Tree Of Life for Heath Care Professionals to support their patients sign up for clinical trials while increasing the diversity of participants. The App uses gamification to make matches of patients and clinical trials. The Tree Of Life symbolizes the matches the doctors made, and with every match, a new leaf grows on the tree. We had data scientists in our team who used Python to determine a diversity index for clinical trials. Snezhana, our fantastic designer, created the look of the App, and I did the coding with Vanilla Javascript and a bit PyScript — I tried it for the first time! You can check out the App here in action; feel free to click around; it has some functionality.

Finishing Strong

I lost a few hours of sleep over the weekend, but I gained much experience building this project to make clinical trials more inclusive! Of course, I need a good rest, and my code needs good refactoring, but on this, I can help. I am richer with new skills, new connections and unforgettable memories. It is the spirit of the HerHackathon, and this was my next-level hacking experience.

One of my favorite activities is baking. I love baking cakes, tarts, cookies, macaroons, brownies, or all sorts of sweet things. It is not new to me; baking has been my long time hobby. What is new to me is (learning) programming! Of course, I shouldn’t be so surprised as these two activities have many things in common, like creativity, attention to detail, problem-solving and step-by-step instructions. But I would have never thought that I would be able to enjoy these activities combined as a Christmas project, and as it turns out, they work out very well together.

At seerow, we decided to surprise our customers for Christmas with custom made cookies. For this, we created a cookie configurator, a website where our customers could design their choice of cookie. First, they could select the cookie dough (from vanilla, chocolate or gingerbread) and icing (milk chocolate, white chocolate, dark chocolate or sugar glaze). They could also select from various topping options as caramel cubes, mini marshmallows, smarties, gummy bears or even sriracha sauce or vinegar chips. We received over 70 cookie requests with so many different (and crazy) combinations. Then, we collected and analyzed the inputs.

We baked a few test runs to ensure that the ingredient combinations were feasible to make. We also designed our cookie shape, an “S”, as seerow. Luckily, one of our colleagues had a 3D printer at home, and he implemented our design and printed the cookie cutter. Then, of course, another test batch was made to try out our cookie cutter and check the packaging of the cookies.

After high tech design, planning and testing, we were ready to bake 100 giant cookies. We used almost 1,5kg of butter and sugar and over 3kg of flour for the cookie dough. With team effort, we baked the 100 cookies in no time!

And then comes the best part, the decoration of the cookies! It is the most enjoyable and creative part of baking and the most critical one. So first, we set up a “production line” to create the various unique ingredient combinations that the customers ordered: starting with the cookie base, adding the requested icing, and finishing it with the topping combination. Fortunately, as developers, we have a great eye on details and a lot of experience with structured thinking, so we had a great time decorating the cookies.

So here are our extraordinary, high tech, seerow cookies. How special they are. Everyone can decide whether or not they are beautiful, but they are delicious. And we made them. And we tried our best. And we had fun. So they are unique. We will probably not include cookie making in our business for now, but it was an excellent experience for us as a project.

Coding Meets Baking was originally published in seerow on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A s I recently started my internship (and my career in front-end development) at seerow, I am constantly looking for opportunities to learn and practice, even when I am not working. So I decided to sign up for HackZürich. It is one of Europe’s biggest hackathons. I was one of the lucky 420 participants joining in person, and further 1200 participants joined virtually to the event, which took place at the end of September in Zürich.

My first hackathon was precisely what I expected: diversity of people with 93 nationalities represented; lots of goodies from the challenge-setters with 18 challenges by companies like Microsoft, Migros, Huawei and Roche to be hacked; incredibly creative ideas for the challenges, a ton of learning by doing and collaborating; a lot of snacks and food; and no sleep at all!
After finding teammates and meeting all the challenge-setters to find out more about their challenges (and to collect two bags of goodies from them), with my team, we decided to work on a challenge provided by Xylem, a large American water technology provider. Their challenge was to create a more sustainable future by helping communities combat the effects of dangerous floods, as extreme weather events and intense rainfall are causing an unprecedented number of floods due to climate change.

Our idea was to create an AI-based decision support system that helps optimize rescue operations during floods to save people, hence our team name, Res-Queue. First, we started a platform where people can upload their photos and videos, and the platform will analyze the pictures/videos and provide a risk score to each location. Then it provides a dashboard for the rescue teams, representing the locations with risk scores on the map and identifying the nearest rescue team.

We used image recognition with machine learning to analyze the pictures; one of our team members even jumped into the Limmat river to prove that the risk score decreases as he gets out of the water. Finally, I worked on the front-end side of the project, creating the dashboard, a visual representation of the data for the rescue teams and a map with the highlighted locations with ArcGIS API integration.

After 40 hours, the event participants coded 64800 hours, ate 1200 pizzas and submitted 155 projects for 18 challenges. The overall winner of HackZürich 2021 was team Thunderstroke, who created an application of real-time image processing algorithms and artificial intelligence to hold a live, remote jam session in 3D to liven up otherwise dry online meetings with music. Our team won the Xylem challenge, and our application is currently in Xylem’s Ignite Innovation Incubator program to be finalized.

This hackathon was a great learning experience for me, and now I am even more motivated to try out new things, read about the latest trends in technology and continue my journey at seerow.

Learning through hacking was originally published in seerow on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.