Unleashing innovation: A recap of Diligent's Global AI Hackfest
In early March 2024, over 200 Diligent team members participated in our annual Hackfest. The event took place in three Diligent offices — Bangalore, Budapest and Vancouver — over three action-packed days.
A hackfest, also known as a hackathon, brings together engineers, programmers and other interested colleagues to improve upon or build a new software program. The theme of the hackfest was AI, and an impressive 48 ideas were submitted!
The energy, enthusiasm and collaboration across the three days were inspiring as colleagues came together to share the future of AI at Diligent. All participants brought their ideas to life, pushing boundaries and representing themselves with pride.
We also caught up with some of the participating colleagues to hear about their experience of Hackfest 2024.
Huge congratulations to our winners and we can’t wait for next year already!
Below you can read colleagues’ experience participating in Hackfest:
Q: What inspired you to participate in Hackfest?
A: “The AI theme for this event presented an excellent opportunity to directly engage with Large Language Models (LLMs) and gain firsthand experience. Also receiving acknowledgment beyond your team is consistently the most effective incentive for joining the Hackfest.” — Harmanpreet Bhatti
A: “The AI space expands and deepens like the speed of light. It holds many opportunities that can elevate the user experience of business-facing applications. With its ability and capacity to shorten processes and ease out workflows, this area of tools is the best candidate to elevate human-machine interactions to the next level. We can be pioneers in this area, and it is an excellent source of inspiration.” — Örs Stenszky
Q: What were the biggest challenges while working on your project? How did you overcome those challenges?
A: “AI is easy to use but hard to master. Our scenario is fairly simple, but we still spent lots of hours experimenting with the Bedrock API. During the initial prompt engineering phase, we realized that most of our instructions (number of categories, response format) remain wishes for AI. We managed to tweak the prompt, use XML delimiters, provide examples, etc., so in the end, it's reliable more often than not.” — Roland Kocsis
A: “At the close of each day, I often likened myself to Thomas Edison, embracing his famous assertion: ‘I have not failed, but found 1000 ways not to make a light bulb.’ It was a time for introspection and receiving feedback. On the first day, although I had a partial solution for summarization, I wasn't satisfied with the results. This prompted me to begin exploring and bouncing new ideas to enhance semantics. Even casual conversations during lunch sparked ideas that I later refined and integrated as new features. Remaining open to sharing progress, engaging in discussions, reflecting on current outcomes, receiving feedback and implementing enhancements is the pathway to surmounting challenges and progressing.” — Harmanpreet Bhatti
Q: Were there any ‘aha’ moments or breakthroughs during the Hackfest that you'd like to highlight?
A: “Yes, for instance, AI hallucination is real!” — Roland Kocsis
A: “We did not have a huge ‘aha’ moment, but more like an okay, this is doable, but we need to narrow our focus further and eliminate some of the features.” — Tamás Jóbai
A: “As a judge, the 'aha' moment was when I realized how much-unspoken user experience improvements are hiding inside individual product teams. In most cases, the teams — sometimes even without UX involvement — approached the problem statements from the point of customers, and their AI solutions always aimed to ease out their workflows greatly. There is a lot of domain knowledge to explore and exploit before we decide on the generic enterprise approach of using AI. — Örs Stenszky
Q: What did you learn from participating in this Hackfest? What advice would you give future Hackfest participants based on your experience?
A: “It is fun, with great learning and motivation. I advise people to participate, even if you don't win. It is fine!” — Rajesh Betapure
A: "Beyond the fun part, Hackfest provided an excellent opportunity to hone the process from conceptualization to production, defining requirements and achieving tangible outcomes. For prospective participants in future Hackfests, I recommend the following steps:
- Generate an idea.
- Assess whether your idea aligns with the project roadmap. If it does, discuss it with a project management member.
- Utilize all available resources, such as AI office hours, relevant project managers, etc., and continuously share your progress to receive early feedback.”
— Harmanpreet Bhatti
A: "I like these steps! Additionally, I encourage everyone to be bold but be able to showcase their boldness in a brief period. Like in an elevator pitch, you will never have enough time to review all the details. Practice your presentation skills because that's selling your idea, not necessarily the outcome." — Örs Stenszky
Q: Can you share any memorable or funny moments from the Hackfest?
A: “Staying awake late at night on a Zoom call to record our video for global participation. We were all sleepy and dozing off on the call.” — Rajesh Betapure
A: “The morning of the last day was characterized by a sense of urgency as I worked to ensure the functionality of one additional feature.” — Harmanpreet Bhatti
Q: What impact do you hope your project will have at Diligent?
A: “It will greatly impact customer acquisition and revenue. The solution covers the majority of our products!” — Rajesh Betapure
A: “Our project strongly connects with our customers. It tailors information to individual personas, streamlining and making more efficient post-meeting analysis. Moreover, it can guide asking the right questions.” — Harmanpreet Bhatti
