Ho Chi Minh City Hackathon
The hackathon event attracted 17 teams and 68 developers, mostly consisting of university students and companies in the Southern region of Vietnam. For three days, teams focused developing virtual assistants using AI technology in areas such as self-driving, manufacturing, banking, hotel services, and more. On the final day of the competition, each team had two opportunities to present their ideas before the judges. Judges selected the top eight teams to present to the judges for the final round.
The Ho Chi Minh Hackathon did not have a first prize because the demo products did not fully meet the criteria outlined in the rules: business value, creativity, impressive factor, and practical application.
Second prize was awarded to team “tobtob.” The two member team, Nguyen Luu Ngoc and Luong Thi Thuy Trang, are both are developers from Singapore. Tobtob’s virtual assistant is a chatbot that provides customers the ability to order food and drinks in restaurants and hotels. This chatbot supports interaction with customers through voice and images, while responding to complex conversations. Users can order food by typing, chatting, or touching items on the menu. Tobtob’s chatbot also applies AI technology during the order process to exchange items and interact with its users. In the future, tobtob will try to increase the capabilities of the chatbot, and will also seek to integrate their chatbot into Ohmnilabs robots, creating a robot with the ability to become an AI waiter and cashier.
The judging board in the Ho Chi Minh Hackathon brought together experienced Vietnamese experts in AI technology. The judges include:
- Mr. Ha Vinh Duy - President and CEO of Worldline Technology. Mr. Ha is a pioneer of marketing technology, using his 13 years of expertise to assist businesses across Vietnam achieve growth through the use of disruptive technologies.
- Mr. Nguyen Tuan Minh - Head of Natural Language Processing at Defide Company, a company that develops Japanese commercial chatbots. Prior to Defide, Mr. Minh was the technical manager of AI at Panasonic R&D and Mobivi 1GC.
- Mr. Ngo Quoc Hung - Head of Artificial Intelligence of AINovation. Mr. Hung is also the director of the intelligence.edu.vn nonprofit program, and the AI (CoTAI) talent center.
- Mr. Dang Nam Hai - Kambria and OhmniLabs's product development technical manager. Mr Dang has over 10 years of experience in operating and developing innovative products.
Vietnam AI Grand Challenge Hackathon Judges
The first event of "Vietnam AI Grand Challenge 2019" hackathon took place on June 28-30 at FPT Polytechnic College (HCMC). This program was organized in conjunction with the Vietnamese government's Ministry of Science & Technology and the Ministry of Planning & Investment, Kambria worked alongside McKinsey & Company, VietAI, VnExpress Newspaper, and the Vietnam Innovation Network. We’d like to thank all of our partners and sponsors of the Vietnam AI Grand Challenge, and we look forward to the next rounds. We can’t wait to see what we can #BUIDL together!
For more information on our next hackathon event in Hanoi, Vietnam on July 12th, 2019, be sure to follow our Facebook Event Page!
