On 9-11 March, Aaltoes, i.e. the Aalto Entrepreneurship Society, organised a Built it hackathon weekend at the Aalto Venture Garage in Otaniemi. The purpose of this event was for small teams to build working prototypes out of their ideas and to persuade the judges to believe that these contraptions could be successful. Some hundred participants finished 16 different prototypes during a weekend of high energy and little sleep. The prototypes included anything imaginable, from a dating service to mobile games, from applications for social media to things made from recyclables.

On Sunday night, the jury headed by the Minister of Housing and Communications Krista Kiuru selected the two top ideas: Kimppis, an application for taxi-sharing (http://kimppis.com/) and Korja.us, a service for problem-reporting (http://korja.us/). The winning teams were awarded conference trips to Europe. From the Department of Computer Science, student Tuomas Husu was part of one of the winning teams. He has previously gained merits in the competitions HSL Mobiilikisa and Apps4Finland in cooperation with other students at the department. Tuomas would like to encourage his fellow students to participate in competitions; in addition to being fun and productive, it is also an excellent way to gather credits and learn new things. He says the idea for the winning prototype came to him when shivering in a dismal taxi queue, from the high taxi fares, and from the challenges of dividing up the fare for a shared taxi.

Tuomas in the middle wearing the grey Build it shirt.

For more on the event, please see:
http://aaltoes.com/build-it/
http://aaltoes.com/2012/03/build-it-completed-final-demos-over-and-out/

Picture: Charlotta Liukas