Hackathon Teams Out Of Colombo Bring Better Ideas


I thought to write on this topic because of a post shared by Shafraz Rahim aiya on facebook. I attached that facebook post below.
I also have seen many good ideas brought by rural hackathon teams and they win hackathons after they make their idea more innovative and more marketable. They may not be a good startup. But they are really good hacks. I remember an innovation called “Niyara kapana yantraya” which won a global award. It also was innovated by a Sri Lankan countryside boy (sorry! I actually don’t remember his name). Why is this happen? Why people live in cities don’t have good innovative ideas although they have more facilities? People who live in cities, have good internet connections, tools to design and develop new gadgets, many human resources, etc. Let’s discuss why this happens in this article. You can give your ideas also in the comment section okay…

Why rural people got good innovative ideas


Many innovators don’t see problems, faced by people in countryside. So that they faces many real life problems which can be solved by technology. And as everyone, live in rural areas try to think how to solve their problems. Even little children try to think how to solve their own problems as well as the problems faced by their parents. Then they come up with good solutions sometimes. The main bottleneck for their thinking power is that they are lack of technical knowledge, they don’t have ways to gather information from the outside and they don’t have experienced people who can mentor them. It’s our responsibility to enhance them by giving them the awareness about the latest available technology and by mentoring them.

Another fact is countryside people don’t need to specially observe the work environment to gather requirements to develop something new. They live in the work environment and sometimes they work in the same environment that has a lot of problems that can be easily solved by using new technology. Then the requirement gathering phase is nothing for them. I think you know it’s the hardest phase in the software development life cycle and it’s the hardest task when you need to develop something innovative.

Main requirement gathering methods

  • Sampling of existing documents 
  • Research and site visits 
  • Observation of the work environment - This is very important method and gives very accuracy information. Otherwise it's relatively very inexpensive requirement discovery method.
  • Questionnaires 
  • Interviews 
  • Joint Requirements Planning (JRP) 
  • Prototyping
These methods are accurately and automatically done by rural people. Then it’s easy to think about the best solution for the problem, they face, if they have awareness about available technology. Then they come hackathons with that innovative idea and win. As an example, I mentor a school hackathon team who came up with a idea to automate cages for little chickens. They came to Hack:Bit 2018 after studying a problem which is really faced by people lives in their village. And they were able to be the first runners up in Hack:Bit 2018 hackathon.

Why city people have no good innovative ideas

Why people live in cities can’t come up with good innovative ideas. There are so many problems in cities also that can be solved by innovations. I think the main problem is internet. People try to find a good problem through the internet when they got the message that there is an upcoming hackathon. Damn idiots. You should know that there’s no way of thinking about an idea for a hackathon by staying in your room. It’s hard to find a real problem through the internet. You should take a visit to a place that don’t use much technology. Then you will be able to easily find a real problem that can be solved by your own innovation.

Another thing I saw is that sometimes people try to match a problem to what they developed. It’s a poor try indeed. It’s very hard to match a real life problem to something you already developed without thinking about anything and without gathering any requirement. The developed gadget for nothing is really a white elephant and it’s good if you develop it to practice the latest available technologies. But I think you will never be able to match a real life scenario with it. I have seen many that kind of white elephant innovations come to hackathons and go home without winning anything.

Conclusion

You should first observe a real life problem which is faced by some groups of people without staying in your room and searching for problems and solutions in the internet. Try to follow above mentioned requirement discovery methods and understand what really people need from the latest technology. Then you can start other necessary steps that need to develop a good marketable innovation. Other thing is if you focus a real life problem, it will be very easy to pitch your idea infront of a judge panel and it will be very easy to market your product.

Please leave your ideas and suggestions as a comment below!!!