Case Study

IWH 2018
Celebrating women developers across the globe

Presenting Sponsor

Schlumberger is the world’s leading provider of technology for reservoir characterization, drilling, production, and processing to the oil and gas industry. Working in more than 85 countries and employing approximately 100,000 people who represent over 140 nationalities, Schlumberger supplies the industry’s most comprehensive range of products and services, from exploration through production and integrated pore-to-pipeline solutions for hydrocarbon recovery that optimize reservoir performance.

Associate Sponsor

ThoughtWorks is a privately owned, global technology company with 42 offices in 15 countries. It provides software design and delivery, pioneering tools, and consulting services. The company is closely associated with the movement for agile software development and has contributed to a range of open source products. It works with people and organizations who have ambitious missions and are strong believers in the power of software and technology as tools for social change.

Community partners

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wonder-women-tech
women-who-code
the-global-women-project
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girl-who-code
girsl-in-tech
north-coders
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stemettes
dc-web-women
code-like-a-girl
black-girl-code
asian-women
afchix
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The challenge

On a busy Monday morning, if you take a walk through your technology department, one brisk glance at the teams sitting there will throw light on the imminent problem that tech recruitment faces. The number of women you see there is a direct reflection of the impending gender disparity in most organizations. Women are dreadfully underrepresented in almost all divisions of tech.

IWH was conducted to encourage female developers across the globe to use technology as an enabler to bring about change while demonstrating all the things that make a great hacker. With this objective, HackerEarth partnered with Schlumberger and ThoughtWorks to invite all women developers and hackathon enthusiasts to participate in an interesting and engaging hackathon.

“Women now have an option to choose exactly what interests them and turn that into a career. Hackathons are a great place for experimentation, self-branding and building your network. You can work on ideas that you are really passionate about and also work with other participants and mentors to refine these ideas.“

– ThoughtWorks

The problem statements

With this hackathon, HackerEarth was able to bring together thousands of participants from across the globe to work on solutions for real-world problems.

A few of the challenges that were put forth

  • Women’s Health and Safety: Create solutions to make the world a safer place for women and make healthcare more accessible
  • Economic Freedom: Devise a tech-based solution which will either empower women at work or facilitate women entrepreneurship
  • Social Impact: Develop tech-based solutions to spread education
  • Innovation: Find a cause that you are passionate about and build innovative solutions

Judges

Dinah Davis is the Director of R&D at Arctic Wolf Networks.She has over 16 years of experience in the tech industry with time spent as a Security Software Developer at the Communications Security Establishment Canada and BlackBerry, and as a manager at TrustWave and D2l prior to Arctic Wolf Networks. Dinah is the founder of Code Like a Girl, a publication that hopes to change society’s perceptions about women in technology. She has taken an active role in empowering girls to choose a career in technology and women in technology to become leaders.

Olivia is currently an engineer at Apple and a student at Stanford. Formerly, she founded Lippi, a makeup retail app that had hundreds of thousands of users. Now, she is a prominent advocate for women and minorities in tech and entrepreneurialism, drawing on her own experience as an engineer and as a founder. She uses her online presence, with over 100,000 followers on Twitter, to raise awareness for issues in the tech industry and provide support and advice for other female engineers.

Maitetxu is Director of Girls in Tech Chile since 2013. She is also the director of ThoughtWorks Chile. Girls in Tech is a global non-profit focused on the engagement, education, and empowerment of girls and women who are passionate about technology. Maitetxu has a degree in history from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and a degree in journalism from Georgetown University. She was formerly Editor of Red mi Voz and the Communications Director at Start-Up Chile.

The Outcome

4800 Registrations

4100 Teams

150 Submissions

3 ideas choosen

Top 10 countries by participation

USA

United Kingdom

SINGAPORE

NIGERIA

KENYA

INDIA

EGYPT

CANADA

BANGLADESH

INDONESIA

“This was my first ever hackathon. I loved the concept. Building a prototype within 15 days was a great challenge. I would like to participate again in the future.“

– Krithika Sharma, Participant

“IWH was really a wonderful experience for all of us — a really strong platform for women developers.“

– Catherine Anto, Winner

Participation from top universities

Imperial College
London

University
of California

Arizona State
University

University
of Waterloo

Harvard
University

University of
British Columbia

Carnegie Mellon
University

Caltech

Brown
University

University of
Nairobi

The ideas that stood out

Rosie: Undermining Language Detector

Rosie is a Chrome extension that detects undermining language and suggests more confident phrasing to help people represent themselves as the professionals they are. Rosie can be used with Gmail, Google Inbox, Outlook, Yahoo, LinkedIn, and Slack.

Play Video

LYZA for Women

Lyza for women is a sanitary napkin for paralyzed women that indicates to the caretakers that it’s time to change the napkin. The napkin is based on the conductivity principle.

Pomme Pet

Pomme Pet is a mobile application to aid its users achieve full recovery from eating disorders by offering access to tools and information to help those suffering from any symptoms at any level.

Experience with HackerEarth

Crowdsourcing works on the principle of “more heads are better than one.” Superior quality of content can be achieved through the involvement of a large crowd for ideas, skills, and participation. With numerous people offering their best ideas, skills and support, one can only expect quality results, which is what happened with IWH 2018. The hackathon brought women developers to the forefront and helped them solve real-world problems.

“It was truly an engaging and interesting hackathon. It was an amazing opportunity to showcase our skills and build something that can possibly change lives of women all around the globe. Would definitely look forward to IWH 2019.“

– Keerthana Devanand, Participant

Bring about tangible change one hackathon at a time.

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