WARNING

Note: This content was originally written in Persian and translated into English using AI. Minor inaccuracies may exist.

Introduction

The National Mobile Programming Marathon is organized by the Sharif ICT Group and Sharif University of Technology, with the support of the Vice Presidency for Science and Technology.
This event is one of the largest and most prestigious mobile programming competitions in the country. Since 2013, 7 editions of these competitions have been held nationwide, introducing numerous programming teams into the job market.
In these competitions, programming teams have 48 hours to deliver an initial version of a mobile application—based on challenges specified by the industry relations committee—to the judging panel.
During this entire period, the teams are quarantined at the event venue, and the judging and advisory teams fully monitor their performance. Finally, the top teams advance to the final stage based on the judges’ evaluations, where they have the opportunity to present their applications to the judges once again.

Main Goal of the 7th Programming Marathon:

Identifying outstanding programming teams in the country, discovering fresh and creative ideas, and facilitating the entry of these teams into the job market.

Working Groups of the 7th Mobile Programming Marathon:

1- Policy Committee:
The duty of this group is to review the event process and select the main challenges of the competition. In this regard, the policy committee meeting was held on September 14 at the Knowledge-Based Business Club, attended by the main and golden sponsors of the event.
Members of this committee:
1- Alibaba Company – 2- Asan Pardakht Company – 3- Yektanet Company – 4- Taavon Insurance - 5- Iran Fara Bourse

2- Scientific and Judging Committee:
The initial duty of this group was to determine the judging criteria before the event, and to evaluate and score the teams during the competition. This group was present alongside the teams for the entire 48 hours and monitored them throughout the event. Members of this team included: Mr. Ehsan Ehsani Moghaddam, Mr. Hamed Asadi, Mr. Mojtaba Haddadi, Mr. Ali Moghaddam, Mr. Amir Hossein Eslami, Ms. Masiha Razavi from the core judging team, and esteemed representatives from Alibaba and Asan Pardakht companies.

3- Advisory Committee:
The main duty of this committee was to monitor the participating teams’ performance and answer their questions during the competition. (While advising the teams, members of this committee also observed participants to potentially recruit them for their own organizations). The members of this committee included representatives from all the event’s sponsors.

Selected Challenges in the 7th National Programming Marathon:

Considering the event’s goal and the marathon’s emphasis on purposeful challenges, a policy committee meeting was held a week before the event on September 14, 2019, in the meeting hall of the Knowledge-Based Business Club to select the main challenges. Representatives of the event sponsors and active organizations in this field attended this meeting. Based on the needs of the participating organizations and current technology trends, the following challenges were selected:

1- Financial Technology and Insurance

• Modern insurance sales methods (including installment sales, On-Demand, personalized healthcare, etc.)
  
• Reward-based and equity Crowd Funding
  
• Automation of routine and repetitive financial processes (payments, savings, etc.)
  

2- Advertising

• Modern methods in “interactive” mobile advertising
  
• Smart collection of unique data and user recognition to provide better services and advertising
  

3- Tourism

• Health tourism focusing on international users
  
• Tourism Gamification, during the journey and at the destination, or encouraging people to travel
  

Event Process of the 7th Programming Marathon:

The competition officially started at 9:00 AM on Thursday, September 19, and continued until 7:00 AM on Saturday, September 21. For the entire 48 hours, the teams were present at the venue and were not allowed to leave the competition area.
On the morning of the first day, the participating teams arrived at the event venue. A desk was assigned to each team, and after receiving their entrance cards and completing the initial forms, they settled in their designated spots.
After completing the registration process, the judging team explained the challenges and judging guidelines.
Once the teams were fully briefed, forms for selecting the challenge and outlining the project were distributed. Teams had until 2:00 PM to complete these forms and submit them to the judging team. The judging team reviewed the general idea of the teams, ensuring the ideas were not duplicates and were feasible, then approved the forms, allowing the teams to enter the next stage.
After receiving permission to proceed, the teams started implementing their projects and had until 7:00 AM on Saturday to bring their ideas to the initial execution stage.
Throughout this period, the judging team and the advisory team—mostly consisting of event sponsors—were present at the venue, monitoring the teams’ performance and providing them with advice.
The most critical stage of the competition was the live judging session. This stage started at 9:00 PM on Friday, September 20, and lasted until 12:00 PM on Saturday. In this stage, based on the submission time of their idea forms, teams were called to the judging office one by one to present their projects in person and explain their ideas.
During the entire competition, all amenities such as breakfast, lunch, dinner, hot drinks, separate resting areas for men and women, etc., were provided for the participants.
The first stage of the competition ended on Saturday noon, and the teams prepared for the second stage and the closing ceremony.
The competition was held according to the following schedule:

Day 1 – Thursday, September 19

Day 2 – Friday, September 20

Day 3 – Saturday, September 21

Judging Process:

Over the 48 hours, the teams designed and implemented their applications in one of the challenges. Each challenge had its own judging criteria, so the project completion process had to align with these criteria to achieve the highest scores.
The main judging criteria included ideation, teamwork, implementation, graphics, and user experience.
The first judging panel consisted of experts specializing in the mentioned topics. During the competition, the judges visited every team. In addition to providing necessary advice and observing their activities and achievements, they discussed the workflow with the teams and gradually recorded their scores. These individuals evaluated the teams’ software based on the criteria of their chosen field. The recorded scores determined the best teams in each category. Until the end of the competition, no one knew the outcome, so the teams had to continue completing their projects and other necessary tasks as before. At the end of the 48 hours and during the closing ceremony, the names of the teams advancing to the second stage were gradually announced.
In the second stage of the competition and the closing ceremony, the selected teams had 10 minutes to present what they had designed and implemented. In this stage, the second judging panel, comprising members of the industry relations committee and sponsor representatives, recorded their votes based on the criteria of each field. The combined scores of the first and second judging stages determined the top winners, who will be introduced later in the report.

Participating Teams in the 7th Programming Marathon:

Event registration began in August 2019, and during this period, 450 individuals registered as 100 teams and submitted their documents to the secretariat.
After reviewing the resumes and backgrounds, and considering capacity limits, 300 individuals in 80 teams were accepted to participate in the competition. These individuals were students and graduates from top universities across the country, as well as independent non-student teams.

Notable Points:

• Out of 80 accepted teams, 75 teams showed up at the venue to participate.
  
• In a rare occurrence, out of 75 teams, 70 teams stayed until the end of the event. In previous years, about 30 to 40 percent of participants would withdraw during the competition.
  
• Participants came from cities including Tehran, Mashhad, Yazd, Kerman, East and West Azerbaijan, Ardabil, Isfahan, Bushehr, Ahvaz, Zanjan, Hamedan, Gilan, Hormozgan, Shiraz, Golestan, Lorestan, Kurdistan, Markazi, and Mazandaran.
  
• 70 percent of the participants were from outside the capital.
  
• We had participants from 30 different universities across the country.
  
• Mashhad and Isfahan had the highest number of non-Tehrani participants.
  
• For the first time in the marathon’s history, an all-female team of three won first place.
  
• One of the participating teams consisted of high school students.
  
• In this edition, we had about 50 female participants, the highest number compared to previous years.
  
• The average scores achieved by the teams increased by 20 percent compared to the previous year.
  
• 82 percent of the participants applied for employment at the sponsoring companies.
  
• It should be noted that the resumes of all individuals are available in the event documents, and the names and details of the accepted teams are available on the event’s website.
  

Participating Teams Rankings

Top Teams

• 1st Place: While(1)
  

Name	Team Name	Education	City	Birth Year
Farnaz Kamranfar	While(1)	Computer Engineering Student, Ferdowsi University	Mashhad	Born 1998
Nastaran Ahmadi Bonakdar	While(1)	Computer Engineering Student, Ferdowsi University	Mashhad	Born 1999
Zeinab Sadat Imani	While(1)	Computer Engineering Student, Ferdowsi University	Mashhad	Born 1998

• 2nd Place: Chalesmeh
  

Name	Team Name	Education	City	Birth Year
Hadi Datli Beigi	Chalesmeh	B.Sc. Computer Eng., Islamic Azad University (Najafabad)	Isfahan	Born 1993
Mohammad Hossein Mohammadi	Chalesmeh	B.Sc. Computer Eng., Islamic Azad University (Najafabad)	Isfahan	Born 1997
Ali Akbar Moeini	Chalesmeh	B.Sc. Computer Eng., Islamic Azad University (Najafabad)	Isfahan	Born 1996

• 3rd Place: Dagger
  

Name	Team Name	Education	City	Birth Year
Amir Reza Bahadorpour	Dagger	Civil Engineering, University of Isfahan	Isfahan	Born 1996
Sajjad Ahmadi	Dagger	Computer Engineering, University of Birjand	Mashhad	Born 1997
Hossein Allah-Rasani	Dagger	Computer Engineering, University of Birjand	Birjand	Born 1997

Closing Ceremony of the 7th National Programming Marathon:

After holding a continuous and breathtaking 48-hour competition, the teams spent a few hours resting in the Knowledge-Based Business Club compound. The closing ceremony officially began at 14:00. Initially, the event sponsors’ representatives gave speeches, followed by the introduction of the top eleven teams by the judging committee.
The introduced teams were then given about 10 minutes each to defend their projects. During this time, the second-stage judges, who were members of the event’s policy committee, graded these teams. After the presentations, the judging committee held a 15-minute consultation session to determine the top teams, and the first to third place winners received their cash prizes.
Prizes for the top teams were awarded as follows:

• 1st Place: 100 Million Rials
  
• 2nd Place: 30 Million Rials
  
• 3rd Place: 20 Million Rials
  

Closing Ceremony Schedule

Closing Ceremony Gallery

Survey Results Conducted During the Event

Event Media Sponsors

Examples of media coverage by the National Broadcasting (IRIB):

• Broadcast on Channel 3 national news on Sept 19, 2019
  
• Broadcast on Channel 1 national news on Sept 19, 2019
  
• Broadcast on Channel 4 Scientific & Cultural news on Sept 19, 2019
  
• TV report by the “Doorbin Haft” (Camera Seven) program
  
• Live news coverage of the event on Radio Iran
  
• News coverage by top national news agencies (at least 35 news reports)
  
• Informational posts on social media networks (at least 100 posts on Telegram, Instagram, and LinkedIn)
  

Main Sponsors of the 7th Marathon:

• Golden Sponsors:
  

• Silver Sponsors:
  

• Bronze Sponsors:
  

Organizers

Event General Secretary:
Dr. Rabiee (Head of the Advanced Information and Communication Technology Innovation Research Institute, Sharif University)

Scientific Secretary:
Dr. Hossein Asadi (Director of the IT Center, Sharif University)

Executive Secretary:
Eng. Mohammad Ali Roozitalab (CEO of Arya Rad Sharif Company)

Head of the Judging Committee:
Eng. Ehsan Ehsani Moghaddam

Event Designer and Organizer:
Arya Rad Sharif Company

Summer 2019