December 23, 2019 Topcoder’s Top 8 Innovation Moments of 2019

2019 was an outstanding year for our Topcoder community and our customers. We like to focus on the innovative things and we’re proud that our platform can handle complex work that is incorporated into enterprise workflows. We exist to change how the world works and many of the examples below showcase the power of an organization tapping into on-demand and specialized digital talent, to do exactly that! Join us in celebrating our top 8 innovation moments of 2019! 

24-Hour Product Testing Cycles with Microsoft

Microsoft Teams is an incredibly successful product suite. It enables collaboration, communications, social and document sharing, and a whole lot more for Microsoft’s customers. Their product development team is super strong and they have a true CICD cadence that has their team deploying new code every seventh day. Microsoft wanted 24-hour testing cycles, every 7th day, powered by on-demand talent. Here’s the story on how Microsoft pushed us to be an even more powerful platform. READ the STORY    

On-Demand Talent at Scale for T-Mobile

T-Mobile took home the Topcoder Innovation Award for Program of the Year and there’s several reasons for our shared success. One of the biggest reasons is because of leaders within T-Mobile who have embraced their use of on-demand talent to accelerate projects. Kendrick Burson, a principal engineer at T-Mobile is a pioneer and power user of our community. With the right leadership support and leaders like Kendrick at the helm, program-level scale can be ramped and achieved. WATCH HIS STORY HERE. 

Improving Weather Forecasting

Water is one of the most precious resources on the planet, but managing this resource effectively is no small feat. Enter the USBR Forecasting Challenge, which has the Topcoder community building algorithms to give water managers the weather information they need to more efficiently manage water supplies. We mentioned Topcoder is uniquely set up to tackle complex problems and we meant it. SEE the CHALLENGE SERIES. 

Advancing Cancer Treatment with AI

In the future, Lung Cancer treatment decisions will be quicker and more consistent thanks to AI. In partnerships with Harvard and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Topcoder members built algorithms to effectively delineate lung tumors on a CT scan, and the results matched the skills of expert radiation oncologists. This is an important advancement for humanity. READ the HARVARD ARTICLE.

Making Exceptional Talent Available On Demand

We’re solving the talent gap in new ways with our launch of Talent-as-a-Service. An alternative to our successful challenge model, the new TaaS solution allows clients to have flexible talent on demand, eliminating the need to hire, on-board, and manage new talent, and ultimately allowing for faster and better business outcomes.

Topcoder Goes Quantum! 

The future got a bit closer with our first-ever quantum-based coding challenges. Read all about our partnership with Fujitsu and how our members used quantum-inspired practices to solve classic problems. This was a big first for our community and our customers. READ ABOUT the QUANTUM SERIES HERE. 

Advancements in Geospatial Mapping

We’re advancing geospatial analytics — involving mapping and satellite imagery — with SpaceNet, which has implications for everything from disaster relief to the military. You can read more about the challenge series here and for the data scientists among us, you’ll enjoy SpaceNet’s post discussing the winning contributors and their algorithms. 

Education and Opportunity For All

THRIVE is here. We’re all about helping our community grow, and now we have a place where members can learn new skills, explore different fields, and stay up to date on the latest developments in tech. Check out THRIVE for a look at all our member resources, from tutorials to videos and more!

Inspired? We sure are. The year 2019 has been a standout success thanks to our members and partners. Stay with us in 2020 as we bring the Topcoder community fresh challenges and catalyze all-new advances across industries.