Hackathon highlight: Team Dynamo

February 10, 2022

The Cloud Native Development Guild’s Facial Recognition Hackathon brought together professionals around the world to demonstrate how facial recognition can be used in the retail industry to solve real business problems using cloud technology. Hackathon participants used AWS, Azure, and GCP cloud-based programming environments to design and build innovative solutions during the event.

Tean Dynamo, made up of four junior professionals, Lepakshi Gupta, Avi Roy Chowdhury, Abhijit Parida, and Devvrat Vaidya, won the hackathon. Here is dialogue from their interview, detailing their success story.


Walk us through your hackathon experience.

Avi : We sought after a simple solution to a complex problem. The entire project took about two and a half weeks. Our expectations were only to learn, yet we were very satisfied with the quality we delivered at the end of the competition. I knew the project was going to have a positive outcome for the team when I heard one of the judges say “I love it."

Lepakshi: We were friends before we competed, and we decided that, although all contestants were more senior than us, we would compete and see where things go. From there, we strategically made our approach different than others. During the event, we met virtually on weekends and had many late nights. Looking back, we put in a lot of hard work and had so much fun.

What did you learn about facial recognition as a result of the event?

Avi: Prior to the event, I knew facial recognition was something I used to unlock my phone. I remembered that an idol of mine, Steve Jobs, once said, “Customers don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” While building our technology stack, I experienced a change of mindset and quickly realized that I can do anything with AWS if I put my mind to it and that the use cases for facial recognition are endless.

Abhijit: I learned how to accommodate users’ data privacy in an intelligent solution. Our system was ‘opt in’ so that only consenting users were surveilled, this is common practice for facial recognition solutions. Additionally, I learned how to anonymize data mappings, a commonly used practice within the technology community.

How has the hackathon experience enhanced your career?

Lepakshi: I learned from Abhijit and Avi directly and am empowered to better use AWS services in my project work. Now, I commonly and confidently use AWS Lambda, S3, and Dynamo, for example. This team-building exercise provided a leadership opportunity in which I managed a complex project, and strategically delivered a valuable presentation and product.

Besides the hackathon, what else do you enjoy about our Cloud Native Development Guild?

Avi: I enjoy our Guild’s routine cloud development quizzes. They are good refreshers on cloud tech and help create healthy competition among the community.

Lepakshi: I enjoy our Guild’s Distributed Ledger newsletter and our Guild O’ Clock webinars. To Avi’s point, I recognize my friends on the leaderboards of our Guild quizzes and congratulate them.

 

Deloitte’s Tech Guild Program and its Subsidiary Cloud Native Development Guild:

Modeled after guilds from medieval times, the Technology Guild Program is made up of focused guilds, or communities, who spend time learning and working with technologies that are shaping new business models. The guilds are hands-on and action-oriented, fostering collaboration, ideation, experimentation, and the development of prototypes. Members of the Cloud Native Development Guild, enjoy hands-on exploration, domain-specific events, and learning opportunities to advance their skills and network around the technology.

Read posts about Deloitte’s Tech Guild:

Tech Guild Program Overview
An interview with a Guild Mastery Program Member: Vaibhav Srivastav

Now, more than ever, businesses are embracing change and looking to technology to enable their transformation. If you want to work with leading thinkers, tackle some of the biggest challenges, and have the most impact—you want to be here. 

Learn more about technology jobs at Deloitte.