Last Friday, the KantanMT team uncovered some hidden vocal talents of their members while hunting through the Dublin streets for a treasure trail organised by Techies4TempleStreet. One of the challenges of the event included busking in the famed Grafton Street in Dublin’s busy tourist district – and boy did our team shine! Below is a short tweet of Dimitar Shterionov and Riccardo Superbo strumming to the famous Proud Mary tune – and by the end, the crowed joined in as well.

The busking event, which saw a number of other teams singing as well, collected a total of €300 for the charity. Around 800 techies from start-ups in Ireland and multinationals companies took to the streets of Dublin to take part in the city’s first charity tech treasure trail, organised by Techies4TempleStreet (T4TS) to raise money for Temple Street, Ireland’s National Children’s Hospital, and to be named Ireland’s “Smartest Techies.”. The KantanMT team was thrilled to take part in this fun-filled event and be able to raise money for such a great cause at the same time. As Louise Quinn, Technical Project Manager of KantanMT put it:

No self-respecting techie could turn down a challenge to nerd-out competitively while raising money for an extremely worthwhile cause!

The atmosphere around town on Friday was vibrant, with great Irish weather, and a number of Techies dressed in the T4TS T-shirts were seen running around the city, competing to uncover the clues before the other teams. The event was kicked off with some inspiring introductions from Tom Kennedy, Chairman of T4TS and Denise Fitzgerald, CEO Temple Street Foundation, after which the teams that raised the most funds were led into the town in cheerfully coloured tuk-tuks.

With not a moment to lose, the KantanMT team went around some of the most popular as well as some of the lesser known landmarks in town including Stephens Green, College Green and the (in)famous Temple Bar area to collect clues for the challenge. The treasure trail was interspersed with tasks that needed to be posted on Twitter, which included having to do a Riverdance or the Hakka! Hilarity by the KantanMT team and other team ensues below:

https://twitter.com/T4TS20/status/649984766117289988

House_of_lordsAfter searching for and dancing with the King of Rock and Roll and getting into some serious and bloody Viking wars, the team got serious about covering as much ground in town as possible and finding out answers to the location-specific questions –  for example, we had to find out what mythological animals can be seen on the House of Lords (we went to the Startup Gathering and found out we had answered right!). Or do you know who founded the Famine memorial and the Wolfe Tone memorial in Stephens Green? We do now!

https://twitter.com/T4TS20/status/649974892914450432

https://twitter.com/T4TS20/status/649964955035435008

Finally, after an evening filled with activity, all teams went back to the RDS for some well-deserved complimentary beers and food, where Corvil, an IT data analytics company was announced the winner amidst rousing cheer. The Rugby World Cup fans had a field day with Reggie Corrigan on the stage, answering questions about Ireland’s chance of winning the coveted Cup.

Amidst all the fun, we didn’t forget about our first passion: Translation!

If all the fun and revelry above made you think we forgot our commitment to Machine Translation, you would be wrong! A mere 24 hours later, the KantanMT team reached yet another milestone by translating a whopping 1 billion words in just 12 days, bringing the total translated word count on the platform to more than 4 billion words. Here’s a quick statistic while you ponder:

Number of KantanMT engines built: 7,783

Number of Training Words: 143,078,042,293

Number of Translated Words: 4,255,900,914

Finally

We will leave you with a last Twitter feed by T4TS, which shows all the happy Techies – confident in the idea that we all put our best foot forward to make this charity event a rousing success, and helped raise money as well as awareness for the children at Temple Street.

To view more Tweets from the event, follow @Techies4TS. If you competed in the challenge and would like us to share the pictures taken at the event, drop us a mail at info@kantanmt.com. If you are interested in helping the children at Temple Street, drop a mail at information@cuh.ie. In the meantime, don’t forget to follow us @KantanMT.

Objective of the Charity

Temple Street is Ireland’s leading National Children’s Hospital. Every year, more than 145,000 extraordinary children rely on the lifesaving care provided at Temple Street. For many, it’s a lifeline. For others, it’s the place that makes them better.

Temple Street is the national centre of excellence for paediatric Neurology and Renal Dialysis & Transplantation. Over the next two years we have a goal to raise €5million for one of our most ambitious redevelopment projects yet – a new Renal and Neurology Outpatients Unit. This new unit is long overdue – it is not a luxury – it is a necessity that is needed for the best patient care. To accommodate both of these areas we plan to construct a new two storey building above our existing Outpatients Area with a designated floor for each.

The Neurology Department currently operates out of what was once an attic making it a very cramped environment for patients suffering from complex disorders such as Epilepsy, Cerebral Palsy and brain disorders. On any given day there could be 80 staff, patients and family members on the ward pressing upon its very limited and exhausted facilities. This new build will increase capacity and provide additional clinical rooms and an adequate waiting room and patient play area.

The second floor of the building will be occupied by the Renal Department and offer additional outpatient facilities for children with kidney problems. Having a new child friendly environment for both Neurology and Renal will make a huge difference to patients and families, giving them much needed space and privacy.

Techies4TempleStreet is aiming to generate over €100k in the first year of the event with a goal for this to occur each year generating an annual income for Temple Street Children’s Hospital.