Hackathons are a breeding ground for innovation, pushing teams to solve complex problems in tight deadlines. Members from Anuket’s Thoth project community recently had the opportunity to participate in the 5G/6G Hackathon 2024! Here’s an outline of the journey, from proposal submission to the final demo.
The Proposal Stage
The journey began on 16th September 2024, when the team submitted its initial proposal. (You can view the slides that covered both the proposal and the final presentation here.) The team’s proposal was one of the 30 shortlisted teams out of numerous entries for the hackathon. The actual competition, a 30-hour hackathon, took place on 26th and 27th September 2024, where Thoth competed under team name “Thoth” and number #8.
The Hackathon: Building TeleCloak
A screenshot of the TeleCloak tool
Once the hackathon kicked off on 26th September, team Thoth hit the ground running. Its objective was to develop “TeleCloak,” a comprehensive tool that combines various advanced technologies like Natural Language Processing (NLP), Auto-Encoders, and IP Anonymization. These models aimed to create a robust solution addressing the need for privacy in telecom data. The next 30 hours were intense, as the team worked tirelessly without any sleep, determined to bring the concept to life.
By the time the demo session began at 10 AM on 27th September, TeleCloak was complete and ready to be presented. Efforts paid off, and based on the evaluation from a panel of three judges, Thoth was selected as one of the top 10 teams for the final round!
The Final Round: Lessons Learned
At 6 PM on 27th September, the team presented in the final round. Unfortunately, the final round didn’t go as smoothly as hoped; the new set of judges expected the tool to anonymize Call Data Records (CDR) specifically, something they hadn’t prepared for in the model. Despite the setback, the team left the competition with valuable lessons and a deep sense of accomplishment.
Explaining the solution to a judge
Reflections
Though we didn’t win the final round, the entire experience was rewarding. We were one of the very few teams, perhaps only two or three, that actually developed a fully functioning solution during the hackathon itself. The hackathon not only challenged our technical abilities but also showed us the importance of flexibility and understanding the specific requirements of the judging criteria.
Participating in the 5G/6G Hackathon 2024 has been a remarkable journey for Thoth, and we’re proud of what we achieved in such a short time frame. TeleCloak remains a testament to our hard work, and we’re excited to see how our experience here will influence our future projects.
The team: (L to R) Sridhar, Rohit, Shashank, Sagar)
Big thanks and congratulations to team Thoth: Sridhar Rao, Rohit Rathaur, Shashank Shekhar Singh, and Sagar Thakur.
Stay tuned for an upcoming post that outlines the technical details of TeleCloak and more of the work the Thoth community is doing to further AI for Networking!
