What do you feel were the key criteria that enabled your team to win?
Thomas: Our wide-ranging knowhow and expertise and the fact that we complemented each other quite well were definitely decisive factors. Our team was well-prepared to tackle the areas important for a data science hackathon: AI, the business idea and the presentation. As a team, we always communicated effectively with each other and held regular standup meetings so that everyone stayed up to date. Each member of the team was proactive and came up with new ideas time after time. Regular interaction with the mentors was also helpful. And, last but not least, we had a lot of fun working together!
Rob: We were able to build a team with a wide variety of skills. This enabled us to complement each other well and cover all of the important aspects required for participating in a hackathon: (generating and developing an idea, identifying a business case and telling a compelling story about the idea). Coming from different backgrounds also meant that we could bring new ideas and fresh perspectives to the challenge.
Having good communication was also essential in forming a winning team, even more so when the team members are from different parts of the world. Regular stand-ups helped us to ensure that we were all on the same page with what we wanted to achieve. Looking outside of our experience within the team, we also leveraged the experience of the mentors with any questions that we had. This was very important in helping us to look at different ways of solving the challenge presented to us.
Our team chose a problem that we were all able to resonate with. We also wanted to have fun whilst doing so, to enable us to get the best out of the team, feel comfortable with each other and deliver a solution that could potentially shape the way an industry deals with a problem.