2020 is the ninth year of the Yarl Geek Challenge. In every previous year YGC’s competition started with a 3 day hackathon held in Jaffna. In 2020, the year of COVID-19 lockdowns and travel restrictions, things have changed. The Hackathon will be entirely online via ZOOM, the internet video-conferencing service. With the new ZOOM format, the 3 day hackathon has evolved into a 3 phase competition leading to a ZOOM Grand Finale.
COVID-19 and ZOOM have created a whole new opportunity. The competitors can sell themselves and their ideas to a worldwide audience. There will be viewers watching purely to see the young talent in Sri Lanka. Viewers who have not been mentors and not been judges and have no connection with YGC, but are just scouting for talent. Perhaps to invest in, perhaps to recruit into their own organisations.
For YGC your idea can be at any stage of development. Your business could be already running, and you are showing the judges how it is going and where you want it to go. Maybe your pitch will include a prototype of your product that is still only an idea in development. Maybe it will be a presentation on the state of the market for your service, showing your competition and market demand, and how you can beat the first and capture the second. In this competition as you develop your presentation, what you are really developing is you.
YGC is the brainchild of the Yarl IT Hub (YIT) itself a gathering of IT professionals with links to Sri Lanka’s North. It has a partnership with CRISP Social Ventures.
Read more on how to get involved:
