For those of you who are Tinder users or just watchful to the tech news, you should know that the App is , helping people to have virtual dates during this time of pandemic crisis.

Why is this relevant for Hackathons and other Innovation Challenges?

Imagine you’re participating at an online hackathon. How do you create your team? I bet you invite the same old gang from the university days, your colleagues at the office or your closest friends. This may work if you’re doing it for the kicks, but not if you want to take it to the next level and to do this in a recurrent way.There’s a challenge that is perfect for you, but you’re missing that crucial team member or even the whole team. How do you do it? Do you just give up from participating?

What if you had a Tinder for Hackathons that could match you with the best Mobile App Developer available?

Hold that thought! Let me recall my last story “Coronavirus and other crises that force people to reinvent themselves”, regarding the subject:

A team composed of Japanese, French and Canadian participants that together collaborate to build a solution? This may seem like the beginning of an old joke, but it can actually be the reality of the future.

When I said “the future”, I didn’t mean less than a month, but what can I say? My team got excited with the idea and actually made it happen 😱

But we both know that this Matchmaking Magic takes time to perfect, so what can you do at the moment?

Right now, at the , you have 2 options to build the perfect team to create an amazing project for a challenge:1. Create your project without a team and then create project positions you want to be filled (kinda like a job board of a company)2. Go to the “Innovators” tab and look for those who are available, according to the skills you’re looking for (a tinder based on skills instead of looks) and invite them to your team.Of course that at the moment, the right person has to be available for you to matchmake them with your project, which is obviously not perfect…

How could we take it to the next level?

From the Innovators specific data such as skills, experience and challenge history, we could do the matchmaking process in a more automated way, in which you would be suggested people to create a project with, adjusting to your needs as a team builder.That would be possible by building Henry, our future Matchmaking Bot, that could build the perfect team for the challenge you’re facing.

Why Henry, the bot?

If you’re an  fan, you know that  was the father of this concept and we’ve decided to do it as a homage for all the great work he has done (and still does) in this field. We hope he doesn’t sue us! 😅

How can you start using our Matchmaking engine?

At TAIKAI we have 2 ongoing initiatives in which you can start using this new feature:1. “Game to Save the World”, the first TAIKAI Game Jam — 

2. “Fight COVID-19 Open Challenge” by TAIKAI 
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Feel free to give us feedback or report bugs 🐞 you encounter!

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References and cool stuff you should look into

1. “Innovation Imperatives from COVID-19” from Henry Chesbrough — 
   
2. “COVID-19 crisis will create the next Googles and Amazons” from Sifted —