The first day
With the purpose of experiencing the event organized by Commerzbank and sponsored by Google, Neosfer and Red Hat. Chen and I enrolled in the Collabothon. It was located on the 7th floor in the neosfer company with a great view of Frankfurt skyline. Check out their website here.
Frankfurt skyline from the 7th floor
very nice weather š°
What is the Collabothon and what can you do there? It is a place to collaborate in a team of 3-6 people with different expertises in different fields. Not all people have the same skill set and excel in their respective task.
This is an event to work together on technical projects. There are a lot of challenges you can participate in. You can read more about it here.
We decided to participate in the innovate finance challenge.
This year is much more international compared to the previous one. There are also other cities participating in the Collabothon at the same time. ÅĆ³dÅŗ in Poland, Sofia Bulgaria ,Prague Czech Republic and of course Frankfurt Germany is partaking in the event.
waiting for the kickoff to start
Chen and I joined it very spontaneously and unprepared. Chen managed to get a team over discord. We didnāt know our team members at all. Chen sent the message in the big Collabothon Discord. Egor approached her after some time. We met the Team on the 7th floor of the building.
Getting to know the Team
We introduced ourselves to each other. Some of them are from different cities such as Stuttgart and Cologne. They found this event through ins. The competition brought us together. We were just doing small talk while we were waiting for the kick off to start.
The kick off was a good introduction for the event and what was about to happen for the next three days. After the kickoff we were going down to the 2nd floor to begin our project and first of all get to know each other.(Nice good job! :)
Egor is a developer from Russia. Heās 23 and married. Highly motivated and sharp.
Jonas is just 20 and also a developer studying cognitive science.
Simsi is a confident presenter and a data scientist.
Robin is coming up with so many ideas and thinking out of the box.
Chen is studying cs master in Darmstadt TU.
We went down to the 2nd floor to start with the project.
Jonas made an empty repo that weād use for the project.
It can be accessed [here](https://github.com/jonasrohw/simplify)
We found some inspiring ui https://github.com/or-abdillh/echo-wallet
After discussion we decided to begin with the project.Ā
FFM skyline
Here is an excerpt for our initial text describing the project.
The main idea of our solution is to simplify the modern finance experience by introducing two main features, which users may find familiar from other platforms: Stories and an AI-driven ChatBot. Essentially, these features create two channels of interaction: one from the bank to the user and another from the user back to the bank. The Stories feature offers a fresh approach for banks to communicate with their users, while the ChatBot serves as an intuitive interface for user queries and transactions. We believe that the combination of these features will not only enhance user engagement but also significantly improve the financial interaction process.
The design of our app
Generally the goal was to simplify the banking apps and its features. We sketched a lot with pen and paper for making some designs. The team was supposed to have a designer(Egorās wife) however because she was sick she didnāt join. But she still managed to send a nice design of the UI the next day and thatās exactly what we submitted later.
Photo of lunch
Photo of pool ( Sadly I realized I didnāt take a photo of the pool)
Whatās inside the souvenir bag? This is the most generous gift bag I have ever seen. Umbrella, t-shirt, beanie, cable, water bottle, pen, jute bag, socks, stickers, notebook
We spent the whole afternoon changing parts of the UI but I have to admit itās harder than I thought. Then we took a break on the 7th floor and were glad to know that our reliable team members Jonas and Robin managed to apply a chat gpt api for the backend.Ā
In the evening Chen and I chilled a bit by playing pool which we felt kind of guilty about. But there were lots of amazing entertaining tools such as Playstation 5, arcade machine, pool and dart.Ā
After leaving the building, Darmstadt gang and Robin headed to Frankfurt Hbf and on the way back we talked much more about dreams, our future.
united as a group āsimplifyā
working until nightfall
video of commits that day
Second day
On the second day we continued to work on the ui.
On the second day Chen and I continued to work on the ui. Since we donāt have so much experience in Vue.js, we struggled with adjusting the code to our tailored needs.
Robin and Luca managed to solve the interesting scavenger hunt. This consisted of 3 major riddles. We had a lot of fun solving the riddles.
Connect people on linkedin of two groups: interne workers from Coba and game developer
We talked with the other teams. They also seemed very motivated to tackle the challenges they had. Speaking with working people that were used to programming or enthusiasts that do that for fun is inspiring.Ā
having fun on the scavenger hunt
model
making stories
very good food
very nice team
very good vegetarian food
talking about interesting topics
financial education
video of the commits of that day
On the way back we saw lots of homeless people sleeping on the ground of the U Bahn station.
homeless people sleeping in the subway
Last day
The train connection was a bit weird due to construction work, so we took S3 to Frankfurt at 10:05 and met the camera man Noah on the train. We saw him immediately in the train but wasnāt sure it was a good time to communicate since it was early and cold in the morning. Surprisingly he talked to us first after getting off the train because he recognized the t-shirt from commerzbank. Noah just joined Coba as an intern for two weeks and this event is his first project and he is mainly responsible for the film making. He told us that his idea was to show the management people how much great influence this competition can have instead of the delicious food or interesting games. Due to the pleasant talk with him, he shot my keyboard later. What I felt is that itās easy to film something but itās hard to be a good story-teller.
On that day we would only refine what we have and build a presentable presentation.
The whole afternoon was about the pitch presentation. There were 17 teams in total. There were teams with great ideas, nice shiny slides, and good introductions.Ā
We were the 3rd last in line for innovative finance. The first group was hardibank. With their app you can visualize how much you saved in a given time frame. You can set your savings goal and your monthly amount you can add to the savings. Graphics and ETA are shown.
in uniform
FinTwin was very interesting. Find your financial partner. It is a dating app but for financial partners. It was funny to see and everyone had a good laugh.
Superbill was a very cool group. The idea was nicely presented. After you pay for something the bill is visible on the banking app. Not only the amount but also what exactly. It is useful to track price changes and track inflation. The slide was super smooth with nice animation but they donāt show any working prototype.Ā
Investly is a gaming solution. If you play a game with your friend and you win, you can choose the stock for them.
Nutri wallet was an application to track your nutrition by scanning your bill and food habits and of course your expenses. It would give recommendations about what to buy next and how to improve your eating habit.
Pay a friend is the group with all the intern people from commerzbank. I actually like their idea very much. People can transfer their money by using NFC.Ā
price for the riddle
what made the collabothon worth it ā¤ļø If you are interested in my tech go to my writeup on Digital quality of Life.