Running the Malaysian Hackathon from a backend perspective

Week One

Day 1: Monday

• In person Registration
• Welcome speech/ Introduction to hackathon (overview, goals, rules, and expectations)
  • Question period
• Presentation on green IT (by sponsors or partners or collaborators)
  • Question period
• Lunch
• Icebreaker activities and team formation
• Concluding talk

Day 2: Tuesday

• Introduction to SusAF
  • Questions
  • SusAF practice on existing technologies (~1 hour)
• Lunch
• Explanation on how the workshops will function
  • These will serve to assist students with comprehension of technologies
• Team work on background research on topics
  • Start considering teams brainstorming based on background research

Day 3: Wednesday

• Workshop on project planning and management
• Teams work on the idea phase
  • This should be based on the background research they conducted
• Lunch
• Team should have a general idea of their solution
• Teams work on a high level prototype their solution
  • Using tools such as figma

Day 4: Thursday

• Teams finish their high level prototype
• Team work on a small presentation on their idea
  • This will be a 15 min presentation on their plan for the hackathon
  • Presentations should include the SusAF diagrams
• Lunch
• Teams present
  • Modifications of ideas and prototype based on the feedback provided

Day 5: Friday

• Team preparation for the development portion of the hackathon
  • Setting up required technologies
• Lunch
• Beginning of the development portion
• Concluding talk by the hosts for the end of the first week
  • This should also act to keep students motivated, and create excitement to start week two on the following monday

Week Two

Day 8: Monday

• Brief introductory talk for the beginning of the second week
• Teams will continue to work on the development portion of their ‘solution’
  • Progress updates should be pushed at a minimum once a day to some platform such as github. Hosts should have access to team repositories
  • Teams should be focused on creating an overall ‘skeleton’ of their tool at this stage
• Lunch
• Teams will continue to work on development

Day 7: Tuesday

• Teams will continue to work on the development of their solution
• Mid-hackathon progress talks and feedback with hosts
  • Individual progress talks with each team.
    • No presentations required
• Teams should make modifications based on feedback if needed
• Lunch
• Teams should continue to work on development, with a goal to have at a minimum, the ‘skeleton’ completed by the end of the day
  • After this is completed, teams should work on the functionality of their solution

Day 8: Wednesday

• Teams should work on adding the functionality to their skeleton
• Lunch
• Team will continue to work on development
• Start working on presentations and demos

Day 9: Thursday

• Final bug fixes and feature enhancements
  • Hosts can assist with guidance on bugs teams are struggling heavily with (if needed)
    • Guidance will be provided. Not solutions to the bugs
• Lunch
• Teams should be finishing the development phase
• Dry run of presentations with mentors

Day 10: Friday

• Demo day presentations/ Pitching session
• Lunch
• Closing Ceremony (Winner announcement)
• Feedback collection from participants and mentors (online form)
• Networking event

Workshops available (In Person / Virtual):

Week 1

Planning Workshop

• Agile (SCRUM)
• Tools that can be used eg GitHub Projects.JIRA , Figma etc

Design Workshops

• Principles of user-centered design
• Prototyping tools (Figma)
• Creating accessible interfaces.
• Designing for sustainability
• User behavior impact on energy consumption

Week 1 - 2

Development Workshops (optional)

• Web Development Basics
  • HTML, CSS, JavaScript basics,
  • Frameworks (React, Next)
  • Best practices.
• Mobile App Development
  • Fundamentals of Flutter
• Backend Development Fundamentals
  • Server setup
  • RESTful APIs
  • Database management (SQL, NoSQL)
  • Backend frameworks (Node.js, Django, Flask)
  • Best Practices

Week 2

Green Coding Practices

• Introduction to sustainable coding practices
• Energy-efficient algorithms
• Eco-friendly design principles

Integration and Deployment Workshop

• CI/CD
• Cloud Deployments
• Scaling Infrastructure
• Best practices for integrating web and mobile applications, API integration