ARCHON Powering Architects via Gamification

What drives innovation? Is it business? Is it opportunity? Is it need? Is it challenges? I believe Architects love to solve problems, provide a vision for growth, mitigate issues, drive business change, rethink legacy and create a new. PASSION to create is what drives innovation. ARCHON is an initiative created by me, to try and ensure all the enthusiastic architects live their passion during this event. First EVER global Architecture Hackathon event

Introduction

ARCHON is a week-long Architecture Hackathon, with participants from across the globe. The event was physically conducted in India – Bangalore, Pune and Russia – Nizhny Novgorod. Our organization comprises of multiple business units (BU). The teams were hence formed ensuring that each team has at least one representative of each BU. BU represents expertise in areas such as Embedded programming, Cloud, Web and Analytics etc. The Hackathon challenge comprises of each of these aspects and more such as Predictive analytics, usage of NOSQL/Big Data, Multi Tenancy, Augmented Reality, 3D Printing, Crowd sourcing, Machine Learning, Gamification etc. An event which provided opportunity to meet folks from different BU’s, to collaborate, to get to know each other, to get out of their comfort zone, to know what other BU’s are doing, insightful opportunity to learn and all in a quick and fun way.

The event was distributed in to 3 weeks. A week for Bangalore, a week for Pune and a week for Russia. 5 teams in each location battle it out. A total of 15 teams. Lot of passionate folks showed interested in participating in the event. The event was hosted in Yammer. All interested folks were requested to fill out a profile and register for the event.

Challenging problem statements were shared on Monday, with a requirements elaboration session on Wednesday and a final presentation on Friday.

Bangalore problem statements

1. AssetAnyWhere
2. LightSuitCase
3. mcrTrendz
4. MyStyleMyWay
5. SocialReView

Pune problem statements

1. AgriFuture
2. AirSync
3. BeingThere
4. FlexMatics
5. MeetMi

Russia Problem statements

1. cSRwe (Pronounced as “Serve”)
2. DocByYou
3. Safesors
4. Seeory
5. ViewDPrint

Global winners and runners were also selected.

Expected 5 teams in each location with about 5 members in each location. However when yammer was opened up, the response was so overwhelming that the event had to be opened up for individuals as well.

What goes on to create an Event:

Lots!! ! To say the least.

• Planning the event
• Budgeting and getting approvals.
• Sharing the plan and Evangelizing
• Reach out to BU heads – Evangelizing the event with them. Ensuring they encourage team members.
• Choosing exiting name for the event
• Creating Posters
• Creating a Logo
• Creating a tag line
• Creating and managing rules
• Marketing the event – Emails, Flyers, discussions, floor walks, Ask Me Anything sessions, large banners, teasers, Evangelizing, Evangelizing and Evangelizing
• Rule Book
• Creating meeting request
• Blocking people’s calendars.
• Video Conference
• Lync
• Meeting rooms
• T-Shirts – finalize T-Shirt designs (2 – One for Judges and one for participants)
• Traveling – Carrying T-Shirts along, creating e-sugam certificates etc for out of country travel.
• Email reminders – creating the content for the same
• Ensuring that the reminders are scheduled to be sent well in advance – approvals for the same
• Announcements – Creating the content for the same.
• Identifying passionate folks who can Evangelize with you
• Identifying judges for the event
• Creating Evaluation criteria
• Using Social media – Yammer to further advertise
• Encouraging teams to use Yammer
• Creating teams – Ensuring the teams are well distributed
• Go through each profile, assess them for completeness, ensure that the teams are well rounded based on the skills provided in the profiles.
• Making sure that the teams are evenly placed. Getting backups as needed or sourcing more help.
• Getting the teams together – enabling and ensuring collaboration
• Identifying team leads – ensure that teams are comfortable
• Collecting feedback
• Collating the feedback
• Media – Photographs, Video coverage
• Creating solution templates
• Creating IT principles that the teams needs to abide by
• Creating challenging problem statements
• Judging the event
• Providing feedback to each team/members
• Conducting requirements elaboration sessions
• Thanks you Emails.
• Prize selection and distribution – coordinating all of that

Logo

Working way through lots and lots of ideas.

Finally decided on 2

Evaluation Criteria

T-Shirt

Posters

Feedback Forms

IT Principles

Rule Book

rules

Judges:

Participants:

Audience:

While I wonder, if the event was inspirational?  Triggered creativity? Stimulated the Passion?

While I Retrospect the Event, I pause and smile reading at some of the feedback:

Excellent event and a great job – Igor Karpunin

Exciting tasks – Alexey Soloviev

It was Fun J , I like the way of measuring solution correctness – Mikhail Limanskiy

Good atmosphere, Great T-Shirts, A lot of new technologies highlighted – Artem Gorokhov

It demonstrates and highlights capabilities of some engineers to come up with good solutions in areas where they are not experts, Opportunity to recognize new talents – Sergey Ziborov

Event ROCKS !  – Vyacheslav Kormushkin

Keep going – Boris Tarasulla

Learned about new technologies – Shinoj Bhaskaran

Waiting for the next event ! !  – Shinoj Bhaskaran

Great Initiative – Asha Hegde

Overall wonderful experience and looking forward for more events like this – Asha Hegde

Suggest to carry out this event twice a year, the presentation could be extendable as artifacts – Rajesh Shenoy

Good forum to interact, learnings in contemporary technologies – Rajesh Shenoy

I Liked and Enjoyed the event – Prasanna Hiremath

Great Job! !  – Srinivas Kudva

The Challenge to create whole eco system based on problem statement – Ganesh Mali

Entire Session was very good – Kiran B Shelke

The topics were interesting – Smita Pawar

Good one, keep it up – Nitin Jadhar

Thanks for opportunity looking for more events like this – Ganesh Mali

Helps immensely to improve on new technologies – Neerav Shah

THANK YOU ! ! !

ViewDPrint – Problem Statement Fifteen, powered by TechSharp

ViewDPrint is one of the world’s largest design and architecture firm. It is well known for its unique skyscrapers around the world. Some of its most famous buildings are located in New York, Dubai, Chicago, Bangalore, Moscow, Valencia, Hong Kong etc.

The firm has a well-defined process for its customers. Prepare a blue print, create models, and help customers visualize the design. Only after validating every aspect of the design with the clients, the projects are executed, leaving no scope for discomfort.

Creating model, takes lot of time and effort.  These models are of 2 types.

CAD models which provide a 3D view of the same, based on the blueprint.

Physical models, which is miniature replica of the models, based on the blueprint.

There has been a lot of advancement in CAD models, and it provides pseudo 2D/3D models, which helps with visualization. Although 2D models are much better to visualize in comparison to Blue Print, there is still a considerable gap to reality. Many customers have expressed the same. 3D models take the imagination closer to reality, gap certainly reduces. The 3D models do provide perspectives, shadow effects etc. even then customers need to spend enough time to sit through with the architect to comprehend the same.

Physical miniature models have been the closest to reality. Since they are layered, every single room, to every perspective is covered and customers are crystal clear, the next level that the customers are now asking for is, visualization of interiors, furniture overlay, and color overlay etc. This is one of the largest challenge to ViewDPrint. The models take a lot of time to create miniature furniture, to devices etc., as per clients liking. This is a very time consuming activity, however it is also one key differentiators in the industry.

This has been an area where ViewDPrint has been researching and has considered innovating. They have consulted  t# for the same. t# has proposed a MVP using 3D Printing and Augmented reality as a solution.

The solution is 2 fold:

Architects will create a blue print. The product that the team will build, will scan the images and project a semi 3D view as shown in the picture above, using augmented reality. This is done to help visualize the floor plan. Once the floor plan is finalized and is the best floor plan for a given area, this needs to get converted into a 3D drawing. Available advanced 3D software can be used. The team can suggest/recommend 3D drawing softwares. Once that is done, the product needs to receive feeds from the 3D software and project it into physical space using augmented reality. This is envisioned to be a projection based rendering, as devices supporting webcam/front cameras. Idea is to ensure that the visualization can be taken along with them, to use back in their offices/homes. The data is made available on the internet. The users connect to their account, download the software, to project 3D objects via internet and render the same. The application provides a user friendly interface, to suggest perspectives and direction of movements, so that the entire intersections/perspective can be visualized by the customers themselves.

Apart from the augmented view, Customers like to place furniture at different places and visualize the same. Use 3D printing to generate miniature models based on the 3D models. The product also has a 3D printer, which receives the 3D object feed and converts them in to physical objects.

ViewDPrint wants to create applications, which can be used by multiple users, to design their interiors. This product will be shipped with a augment projector or it can be downloaded, separately. The Product is called ViewDInteriors. The concept is to view through the smart device, which provides you with an option to add 3D objects, available to overlay on what you are viewing. You could also change colors of the wall etc., and the view applies it on the fly. This provides the user with the ability to visualize interiors in a great way. 

The architecture will have to handle all the above mentioned products:

Additions:

Use of disruptive technology: How do we size it?

Methodology to use and reasons for the same

What are the steps to be taken for Project architectural governance, monitoring?

Define Application performance benchmarks

Seeory – Problem Statement Fourteen, powered by TechSharp

Seeory is an innovative leader in the education industry, with over 20 million students per month, spread across the world and over 300,000 topics created as chapters and lecture notes made available for everybody to use.

Upto this point the material made available to everybody was textual in nature. Seeory believes that seeing something visually rather than reading or through imaging helps to better comprehend concepts and provide more clarity. Combination of seeing and Theory,hence “Seeory”.

There is a parallel effort to create lecture videos, videos of various field trips. This is a huge effort and generating the content is very challenging. However, lot of universities, educational institutions are contributing to this effort by creating content, additionally MOOC and other content aggregators are also contributing to the cause.

Seeory wants to create three dimensional augmented visualization of objects around the world. This will enable the students to get the complete picture. Example: If the topic is about a place like Taj Mahal, Saint Basil’s Cathedral a complete 3D model of the same would be created. Students will not only be able to relate the image of the same, but will also be able to understand the architectural significance of the monuments. For enthusiastic students there will also be lot of additional information like height of the building, number of stones used to build and various other statistics are made available. Visualize the building, in and out and get a complete insight of the building. This applies to every subject. For example: Chemistry. Students will not have to imagine what a Liebig condenser looks like, a 3D object of the same will be available to visualize the same. Seeory has other divisions who work with various 3D printing services for which they create the models. This service has been extended to the Educational vertical as well.

The 3D model is also embedded with additional videos, image tags, etc. that shows the usage of the apparatus and other relevant information.

While there is no, one standard across the world, parallels can be drawn between the syllabuses across the different countries.  Seeory intends to certify and evaluate students globally and encourage them to take courses. Seeory has gained the credibility similar to that of well-known universities.

Hiring people to evaluate millions of students is an impossible task. Most of which therefore is intended to be automated. Seeory also believes that everything cannot be automated, and intends to use crowd sourcing for some of the evaluation.

Seeory also has a plan to build a device (Seerface) which is cheap so, that it can be used by universities/School/Colleges and that can handle the innovation needed. The idea is that, every such entity will have this device similar to labs and as part of that every student will be enabled to use the same.  This might be similar to the tabs however the device is envisioned to be larger so that the visualization can be larger and a team/group of students in the lab can work together.

There are multiple challenges associated with this. The teams need to provide the solution for the following:

1. Create a website which hosts all content.
2. Create a data base which holds all data. Note: Most of the data is unstructured.
3. Create an integration architecture which enables integration with MOOC, Education aggregators, Devices, Educational Institutions, etc. – Standardized API layer/Protocol for the integration
4. Build .a standard protocol for the 3D objects to be interchanged.
5. Provide the specs of the Seerface and architecture needed to implement the same, along with accessories if needed.
6. Many institutions are adopting tablets etc. rapidly, the media content and solution needs to support cross channel.
7. Performance is the key to the success of media streaming. The content will be used in developing countries with limited bandwidth and hence lot of emphasis is on performance. With over 20 million students all – ready and expecting to grow very steep, the system should be built to scale.
8. The data is best used when analyzed. Seeory wants to capture student progress data, analyze questions by students on the same, provide relevant answers, identify metrics on how a certain chapter is being used, number of views, interest level of students. Point in time, where students divert and look up google for instance, which might provide insight on the video content, that is either not so interesting or is difficult and hence students might need to look up for more information etc.
9. Biggest impact of the entire program is the social aspects of the challenge. Seeory wants every student to share. Provide a solution to enable integration with existing social networks or create one with in Seeory, distinguish between, parents, teachers, and students etc as groups.
10. Contents reach need to be measured via social network. So design a module which crawls the internet and identifies where the content is being shared and how it is perceived. The module is called Seerawl.
11. Enable crowd sourcing for the evaluations through the website: Assume subjects like English to be part automated on grammer, context etc Vs crowd sourcing on rating the work itself which has too many parameters to automate. Assume subjects like art to be evaluated as crowd sourcing.
12. Automating the course evaluations. Create an scalable evaluation engine. Assume subjects like math, computer science, analytics, etc.

Additions:

Use of disruptive technology: How do we size it?

Methodology to use and reasons for the same

What are the steps to be taken for Project architectural governance, monitoring?

Define Application performance benchmarks