After a stellar year, our trajectory continues, Rome2Rio is taking off. We celebrated with our third hackathon, the Rocket Edition. Inspired by all things space, innovation, AI, feats of engineering… anything ignited fire in the belly for project lift off.
13 teams, 3 days, 3 judges..t-shirts and kit organised, donuts, pizza and coffee ordered;
Post-its, whiteboard markers ready… 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 lift-off!
Ideas were flying, problems being solved and before you knew it prototypes produced.
Teams small and large, all with BIG ideas
Including…
- Onboard — a tool for new starters and people wanting to learn part of the system, using learning by doing
- Remote2Rio — An interactive map to see where Rome2Rioers have worked remotely and where our freelancers work
- How2companion — A lighthearted look at travel companions and how we might connect travellers
- BlazinglyFastGeocoder — as the name suggests, on a mission to build the Rome2io geocoder in the blazingly fast programming language, Rust
- Travel2sustainabilty — a big team working on the big problem of making travel more sustainable, including how Rome2Rio contributes
- Ready2launch — a rocket launch API into Rome2Rio so that can show a schedule of when launches are occurring and how to get there
- Passport requirements — a tool to help users decipher the varying passport / visa requirements for their destinations.
- AgencyLineViewerWASM — Updating the agency line viewer using Blazor integrating it with google maps and see how to organise the UI using C#
And the winners are…
The Ready-to-be-Shipped award went to Door2Rio
Samaa singlehandedly solved our office’s problem of not hearing the doorbell or getting to the door quick enough. We were missing important deliveries.
Integrating a nest door bell with a slack channel, team members could be alerted, view a live stream and talk to anyone at the door, even if no one was at the office. Nice one!
The Most Innovative and the People’s Choice award went to Place2Stay
Have attractions you want to visit and don’t know where to stay? Place2stay helps you work out which which hotel to pick that’s the closest to what you want to see and do. The team got a working prototype up and running within a few days — a proof of concept that Place2stay could be shippable and part of a bigger itinerary planning feature.
What did the people say?
“It’s my first hackathon — it’s cool to work with people you haven’t worked with before. As a junior it’s nice to work with lots of seniors who are very adept at what they do”.
Russ, Junior Software Developer
“Huge congrats to all the hack teams. As a new starter this week I’ve been absolutely blown away by the sheer number of amazing ideas and impressed by the ingenuity and passion that is so evident from talking to so many of you! So pumped for the future of R2R”.
Bo, Head of Product and judging panel for hack #3 2022