Celebrating achievements: First prize hackathon winner!

Well done to CyberPro Consulting (Pty) Ltd 's Alvin Muala for bagging 1st prize at our client’s AI Hackathon!

Alvin is a dedicated and experienced Senior .Net Developer, currently deployed at one of the industry-leading firms in the banking sector, with over 8 years of experience designing, developing, and maintaining robust .NET web applications and RESTful web APIs using C# as well as other various web technologies such as JavaScript, Angular, React, Blazor, HTML, CSS, and Bootstrap. He holds a National Diploma in Electrical and Computer Systems Engineering.

Recently Alvin Muala participated in a hackathon and his brilliant solutions won him the first prize!

The Hackathon, organized by the client he is currently working for, aimed to help transform their technology landscape through the clever use of data and artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud solutions, while showcasing their workforce as Africa’s top technology talent.

There were various problem statements to choose from. Alvin’s team created a 24/7 on-demand chatbot, enabling corporate clients to get quick answers to their queries without necessitating calls to customer support.

In the pursuit of offering enhanced customer service for their clients, the team identified that one of the biggest client pain points was the low customer service response times to issues and queries.

Amazon AWS was their infrastructure of choice.

By leveraging the power of Amazon Lex, combined with Amazon Cognito, IAM, Polly, Lamba, and S3, they were able to create a powerful AI chatbot that could address platform-related queries in an unassisted/self-service fashion in a matter of seconds which reduced service response time tremendously.

The ChatBot could service customers on scenarios such as payment approvals, device delinking, biometrics activation, passcode setup, FAQs, and FX orders.

Alvin's submission stood out for its technical excellence and transformative impact in enhancing customer service. His achievement highlights his skills as a developer. When he is not coding, Alvin enjoys playing guitar and spending time with his family.

He stays up to date with the industry trends and newest technologies through reading tech books on new trends and he enrolls regularly in online courses and tutorials on platforms like Udemy. He also frequently reads articles and blogs relevant to the .NET ecosystem.

A simple piece of advice Alvin would give to aspiring developers is “Always be curious, learn to ask the right questions, and never stop learning and improving yourself”, for him that’s the winning formula.