Queensland Academy Celebrates Inaugural Hackfest Contest

Funmi Ogundare

It was excitement all the way, recently, as Queensland Academy, Lagos, marked the first edition of its Hackfest day celebration, aimed at ensuring that students can explore and deploy technology to solve the basic problems confronting the economy.

The programme had top professionals and major players in the ICT industry across the world in attendance.

The participating schools included; Mater Dei College, Grace Schools, Riverside College, teams from the host school, and others like Canterbury Schools and ST &T Schools, which participated online.

They were presented with problem statements to work on within a specified timeframe.

For two days, contestants battled it out for the ultimate prize.

The Supervising Director of Queensland Academy, Mrs. Folakemi Okunoren, who welcomed participants, commended the bravery of every team and challenged them to bring their creativity to bear.

The visionary, Mr. Jacob Ajala, noted that such an initiative becomes necessary in schools, particularly considering the challenges confronting the various sectors in the country.

The keynote speakers from India, Mr. Viqaruddin Surki of IBM, India, and Professor Sudeshna Chakraborty of Sharda University, respectively, provided the much-required impetus to ignite invaluable insights in the contestants.

With much at stake in the battle for the ultimate promise, the teams immediately went to their breakout sections for the task at hand.

To ensure proper monitoring and objectivity, each team (both physical and virtual) was assigned a mentor in case of any challenges. For several hours, the teams were busy brainstorming and generating ideas on the problem areas under the watchful eyes of their mentors.

The programme also featured prototyping and storyboarding.

After two days of intense brainstorming, the team from Grace Schools emerged the overall best with a grand prize of N100,000, followed by the team from ST&T Schools with N50,000 and a team from the host school, Queensland Academy, came third with a cash prize of N25,000.

In his remarks, Mr. Ashutosh Srivastava from Amazon told his story of how a similar event was the beginning of his IT journey. The keynote speaker and Chief Executive Officer of Simplex Solution Limited, Mr. Femi Adeniyi, expressed his satisfaction with the participants and encouraged them to see themselves as winners irrespective of the event’s outcome.