Last July 14, Amazon Web Services (AWS) held its very first hackdays challenge in Manila, Philippines. Hackdays is a day-long event that challenges developers to create products that innovate in one of four different industries. These include transportation, media, e-commerce, and fintech. Being a machine learning competition, one of the requirements was for the product to incorporate AWS’ machine learning services. Prior to the actual event, initial product summaries were submitted online where judges selected the top teams to move on to the event proper.

Aside from the hackdays event that was held in Manila, five other hackdays were held in different cities across Southeast Asia. The other participating cities were Singapore, Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, Jakarta in Indonesia, and Bangkok in Thailand. The winners from the each of these cities will go on to compete against each other until a single champion from Southeast Asia is crowned.