🦾 Hey everyone! Welcome to the L2L family!

Since you are here, we bet you share our values of helping others and can create out-of-the-box solutions for complex problems.

🔥 The hackathon shuttle is about to take off 🔥

On November 19-20, get ready for:

🔹 lectures from experts to learn from
🔹 showing your best skills to judges
🔹 hacking into complex problems with your team

If you already have a team, please let us know by filling out this form.

All the information you need will be published on this channel. Stay tuned, hackers!

Great to see more and more of you joining the channel! Today, let’s go through the tracks ⬇️

L2L will have three competition tracks:

🏠 Basic needs
Hygiene products, food, affordable housing, daycare and more. Suggest your creative solution to provide easier access to the most vital things for those in crisis.

🔍 Job Search
Obtaining a legal status and finding a job gets way more difficult when your move is not planned. Face the challenge of transforming this hardship into a step-by-step instruction.

🫂 Connection with people
Finding yourself in a new environment can be fearful and traumatizing. Gather your technical skills to connect the newly arrived with a compassionate community they deserve.

No need to choose a particular track right now — you will have to pick during the event already. However, have a look and give it a thought. What are you drawn to and where can your skills be helpful the most?

Still got questions about the hackathon tracks? Ask in the comments section 👇

How to gather a hackathon team?

There are usually 2–4 people per team, and each person covers one of the following needs:

🔹 graphic design — for eye-catching visuals;
🔹 front-end — for a friendly user interface;
🔹 back-end — to make the good-looking stuff functional;
🔹 domain expertise — to bring in what your particular project needs (ML, UX, etc.);
🔹 product and business — for market and target audience research.

From theory to practice now:

✔️ If you already have a team, don’t forget to sign up via the table.
✔️ If know someone who wants to join but hasn’t applied yet, send them this form asap;
✔️ And if you want to form a team at the hackathon, please prepare a short #whois text: your full name, current occupation, specialization, work experience, previous successful projects, hobbies and other interesting facts. This text will be used during the hackathon.

It’ll help with finding teammates, new colleagues or even friends with the same mindset 💜

Who are mentors and why do you need them? 👩‍💻

They are experts in their field and the main helpers of your team at the hackathon. Mentors do not create ideas or write code for you. Their task is to monitor your project at different stages and adjust the details if necessary.

Every L2L team will be assigned a mentor from one of these companies:

🔹 Azul Systems
🔹 xglab.pro
🔹 EPAM
🔹 Yandex
🔹 Pontem.network
🔹 JetBrains
🔹 MynaLabs
🔹 Mediapark
🔹 capybara.one

Excited yet? 😜

We want everyone to feel comfortable, safe and respected during the event 😌

Please, read and follow the basic rules of the hackathon:

All participants are required to:

🔹 come to the hackathon without a ready-made project. The code written in advance will be considered cheating and entails team disqualification;
🔹 be polite and avoid spam messages in chats and comment sections created for teams to communicate with the organizers, not interfere with the work of other participants, only ask questions related to the hackathon;
🔹 attend mandatory events held at the hackathon;
🔹 comply with the requirements of the organizers regarding the conduct, participation and admission to the final pitch at the hackathon;
🔹 solve problematic issues in private messages with the organizers.

Thank you for understanding 💜

Meet the judges 👩‍💻

Here are just some of the experts invited. You are about to meet even more amazing people in just 2 days.

⭐️ Job Search Track

🔹 Nadya Petrova

- Founder of Luna Park HR agency
- Writes a blog about psychology for STEM audience

🔹 Tany Save

- Forbes 30/30
- SupportAI

⭐️ Basic Needs Track

🔹 Anastasia Burakova

- ‘The Ark’ founder
- ‘United Democrats’ founder
- A human rights lawyer at ‘Open Russia’

🔹 Olga Kad

- IT blogger
- IT LAND school founder
- Ex-Sber, Margex, Milkinside senior product designer
- Eight-time hackathon winner

⭐️ Connection Track

🔹 Matthew Revazov

- Editor of ‘Guide to the Free World’
- ex-Oken IR

💰Monetary prize💰

First of all, don’t worry if you don’t get one. Hackathon is always about networking, and every participant can get noticed by a potential employer regardless.

🥇$1000 — for the absolute winner team
🥈 Further help in the project development
🥉 Further help in the project development

$500 — the mentors’ choice award — might go to any team!

Time to roll up your sleeves 💪

🦾 Already tomorrow

We can’t wait to meet all the participants! Be sure to join us tomorrow, at 10:30 am (GTC +3)

Hope you are all set and ready for a great weekend of hacking 😎

Please note that tracks mentors and teams (if you don't have one) will be assigned to you during the event. Your only task for now is to prepare a #whois text:

- your full name
- specialization and current occupation
- work experience, previous successful projects, hobbies and other interesting facts (optional)

If you have any questions left, feel free to ask in the comment section👇

How can improvisation help you come up with an idea? 🤔

🔹 Each participant writes an idea
🔹Take turns listening to each of the team
🔹Continue the idea with the help of the "yes and" technique

Reducing the number of ideas, I recommend using the "yes and" technique.

The "yes and" technique is a method borrowed from improvisational comedy that encourages the performer to listen to what another participant has said and then comment on it.

Saying "yes" encourages people to assimilate ideas and be more receptive to the suggestions of others, instead of quickly rejecting the idea, it would be better to accept it first, which will allow the discussion to move smoothly to the discussion of the idea.

Keeping the "and" helps people refrain from directly changing the proposed idea and instead rely on what has already been proposed.

More about life in California and working at Google, as well as about the L2L Hackathon, see in the next reels, so as not to miss — subscribe 😎

⚡ Start in 1 hour ⚡

Good morning (or evening:)) everyone!

Hope you’re all set and ready to start the 2-day hacking marathon 😎

For any questions ➡️ @l2lhackthon

The opening starts now 🙌

Join us via the link: https://tum-conf.zoom.us/my/l2lhack.