Gathering Ideas for a 2-Day Overnight Event... Kakao Hosts University Student Ideathon

Over 190 University Students Gather for Ideathon

"Through the experience of completing a project within a limited time, I feel like I got a glimpse into the life of an actual developer. The process of solving problems that arise while concretizing ideas itself will be a great help to my career." (Lee Dohoon, Kyungpook National University student)

To directly plan Kakao's mission of 'bringing the necessary future closer through services,' about 190 university students from five universities nationwide gathered.

Kakao announced on the 27th that it held the Kakao Tech Campus Ideathon, an industry-academia cooperation ESG project, at Kakao AI Campus. The Ideathon is a two-day overnight mini hackathon where students participating in Kakao Tech Campus brainstorm ideas for services they will create themselves.

Kakao held an ideathon for the industry-academia ESG project, 'Kakao Tech Campus,' at the Kakao AI Campus from the 22nd to the 23rd.
[Photo by Kakao]

Kakao Tech Campus is an ESG project that Kakao has been conducting since last year to address the imbalance in technical education in non-metropolitan areas. In collaboration with regional base universities, it provides opportunities to learn and apply technologies needed in actual companies. The goal is to cultivate junior developers who can be immediately deployed in the field. This year, the program has significantly expanded its target students and curriculum, with 190 university students from five universities?Kangwon National University, Kyungpook National University, Pusan National University, Chonnam National University, and Chungnam National University?currently enrolled.

The program runs from April to November, aligned with the university academic calendar. It is a course that progresses from basic education to actual service implementation. In the first phase, a 10-week basic development education was conducted. During this period, students learned frontend, backend, and Android development tech stacks (programming languages and frameworks). Then, during the six-week second phase clone coding course over summer vacation, students cloned KakaoTalk Gift and KakaoMap services, applying the tech stacks learned in phase one and receiving one-on-one code reviews from industry mentors.

The recently held Ideathon was the third phase, where students designed the screens of the services they intended to develop. After the Ideathon, starting in September, students will implement actual services from planning to deployment and hold a final presentation at the end of November.

Lee Younghoon, Head of Kakao Group HR Team, said, "Kakao Tech Campus is Kakao’s unique ESG program that provides future developers, who have relatively limited educational opportunities, with the experience of directly developing real services. We hope that the experience gained from this Ideathon will serve as a good foundation for students in the process of developing actual services."