Pega Announces Winners of Global Software Hackathon Focused on Solving COVID-19 Issues

By AIT News Desk On Jul 6, 2020

Developers rally to help their organizations and surrounding communities navigate the pandemic

Pegasystems Inc., the software company empowering digital transformation at the world’s leading enterprises, announced the winners of the Pega Community Hackathon 2020 – Pega’s first hackathon open to its global community of developers. The six-week event attracted more than 750 registrants and 75 final projects focused on helping organizations navigate the COVID-19 crisis with better customer and employee experiences.

Angelo Mermiklis, a UK-based developer, Clydesdale Bank won Best in Show with the highest score for his ‘V for Volunteer‘ omni-channel application that connects employees with open volunteering opportunities in their organization. Just a year after certifying as a Pega Certified Systems Architect, Angelo used Pega’s AI, case management, collaboration, mobile, and chat capabilities to beat out a talented field of individual and team competitors. Other prize category winners included:

The Runner Up Award to the srcLogic team for ‘Pyra‘ – Receiving the second highest score, the seven-person team from srcLogic created a web-app to give employees a platform to suggest and vote on new ideas that could impact change in their organization.
The Inspiration Award to Cognizant team for ‘Empathia’ – Given to the top submission that addresses worldwide pandemic problems, the Cognizant team’s solution minimizes communication gaps between organizations and employees during a crisis.
The Innovation Award to Ajanthan Arulananthar for ‘DX API Doc Gen’ – Awarded to the best solution that helps employees work efficiently in the pandemic, Ajanthan from Virtusa created a time-saving Pega component for generating documents dynamically from Pega applications.
The Community Choice Award to the student team from Chennai Institute of Technology for ‘Feed the Need’ – Eight students from CIT won for the highest public vote total with an application that connects people in need to critical resources and donations.

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A panel of Pega judges evaluated submissions based on their level of innovation, real-world impact, and execution. Both professional developers and coding novices submitted projects using Pega Platform, the market leading low-code application development solution. All award winners will receive cash prizes, with Best in Show also winning free passes to PegaWorld iNspire 2021.

Quotes & Commentary:
“As this was the first time we opened the hackathon beyond our employees, we didn’t quite know what to expect – particularly with the uncertainty of the pandemic swirling around the world,” said Stephanie Louis, senior director, community and developer programs, Pegasystems. “We were impressed with the level of participation, skill, and passion from our global developer community who used their time and talents for the greater good. I’d like to congratulate Angelo Mermiklis and everyone that put so much thought, creativity, and enthusiasm into each entry. We look forward to doing this again next year with our thriving community.”