Newsletter #33
Check in on our Buildathon progress ⚒️ plus Hack for Gaza recognition 🇵🇸
Salaam to all 👋!
Welcome to the February edition of the DD Newsletter - the place to go for your round-ups, updates, and everything in between. Here we'll round off what has been happening in our community and look ahead at our upcoming events and initiatives!
As usual, the newsletter is jam-packed with updates, lots of stuff to share, and a few cool things worth checking out. This edition includes information about upcoming events and campaigns, a Community spotlight, interesting reads, and our favourite meme of the month. You won't want to miss it.
Stay safe and in good health!
Behind the Buildathon Curtain
We’re now halfway through the Buildathon Batch 2 programme and things aren’t slowing down. The teams keep building and working on their products to hit the next milestone and then the next one after that.
We thought it would be a good opportunity to share all the other things that are involved in the Buildathon programme that teams take part in to maximise their output. So if you’re considering applying to Buildathon batch 3, here’s what you can expect:
🙋 In-person weekend - we typically have 3 on-site weekends where teams are encouraged to come in, network, knowledge share and get feedback from the cohort.
🧑💻 Weekly check-ins - even when we’re not together in person, teams are still building away and we hold accountability check-ins to make sure everyone is on track with their targets.
🔥 Roast-me Sessions - we invite industry experts to come and roast our teams’ products/solutions so that they can start thinking about it from more of a product perspective.
🎙️ Founder Talks - we invite successful founders to come and give small talks and advice to the teams and tell them about their journey for motivation and encouragement including from companies like Co:Helm and Sequoia Homes
✅ Accountability Targets - each team clearly defines their next target, objective or milestone so that we can track progress against it and ensure everyone is on track to deliver their solution.
🍱 Refreshments - we make sure to keep our teams energised with sandwiches, refreshments and even cohort dinners.
Deen Developers events sell out quickly so make sure to follow us across all our social platforms to stay up to date with our latest events and activities
Additional Highlights
Ibrahim is running the London Marathon to fundraise for Sudanese refugees that have been forced to flee because of the war 🇸🇩 Donate here
Hack for Gaza Shoutouts 🗣️
We have talked about the Hack for Gaza a few times in recent newsletters, and for good reason. We’re so proud of the efforts of the entire community to come together and make the event so successful.
Not only was the event successful from a community perspective, our first global hackathons and our largest hackathon to date, but the outputs and products built continue to show how we can contribute our skills to make a meaningful impact for important causes.
Even though the event may have finished, it’s amazing to see people continuing to work on their products. In particular, congratulations to the NewsCord team for their continuous updates and improvements and for getting recognised by Paul Biggar of Tech For Palestine.
We wanted to use this opportunity to share some shoutouts that came directly from hack participants to recognise the amazing people who took part:
❤️ - I want to say huuuuggeee thanks to Mishal :) as they say it is not about the idea it is about people and Mishal knows how much I appreciate his presence and his devotion to contribute as much as he can. Mishal you are amazing MashaAllah)! I would love to work with you forever :D and this is what I am trying to do with my limited time. I hope to contribute more in our current projects in sha Allah and beyond. Stay amazing as you are MashaAllah
🧑🎨 - Shout out to Summeyye Noman and Sara Asfiya for the quality designs done.
🤝 - Shout out to Jafar Zubair, Wais, and Fares for your contributions, collaboration, and teamwork.
👏 - Konouz was one of the best people I've worked with. She is so kind, smart and humble Masha Allah. I'd love to work with her again on another project someday.
Community Spotlight
Echo AI 📞
This month’s spotlight is focussed on one of our Buildathon cohort who have gone full time into pursuing this project - Echo AI.
Said and Idris are building Echo as an AI Copilot to give superpowers to contact centre agents. They combine exisiting CRM systems and knowledge bases with LLM technology to provide AI assistance for common workflows.
With the help of Echo, companies can:
🧾 - Support their agents with real-time guidance
🤖 - Automate after-call work with one click
⚒️ - Equip agents with essential tools for seamless support
The Echo team are currently in the process of piloting their technology with customers and are on the look out for contact centres or in-house customer service functions keen to provide an AI super boost to their agents. If you know any company or contact who might be interested in a demo then definitely reach out to them at withecho.ai
Other Spotlights
Yosuf has started writing about about getting into contracting with The Contracting Playbook. The latest edition focuses on how the pace of work differs for contracts compared to permanent roles.
Meet App Cards has launched and is ready to download.
The Sadaqah Made Easy app has launched on the play store for android.
The Community Spotlight section is an opportunity to share announcements, job openings, and anything else that’s worth highlighting.
Post on the #03_show-and-tell channel if you have something to share.
Slack's Digest
Interesting Articles Shared
Meme of the month
I tried asking ChatGPT to write the caption for the meme of the month 🧠🤖🖊️
Have you got a funny meme? Post it on the #08_memes channel!