Saudi Arabia has set a new world record for the most simultaneous participants in a software development contest, with a total of 2,950 tech aficionados attending a three-day Hajj Hackathon in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah that concluded on Thursday.

Technology legends such as Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales joined thousands of tech enthusiasts from over 100 countries on Tuesday night at the official opening ceremony of the first such hackathon being held in Jeddah, according to a press release from Center for International Communication (CIC), Ministry of Media, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

The Guinness World Records announced on Wednesday that the Saudi hackathon event broke the previous record set by India in 2012, which had a total of 2,577 participants. “The [record of] most participants in a hackathon was achieved by Saudi Federation for Cybersecurity, Programming, and Drones (Saudi Arabia), in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on 1 August 2018,” read the Guinness World Records certificate. 

The decision to host such an event is evidently aimed at changing the conservative image of the Gulf Arab kingdom as part of the ongoing social and economic reforms known as Vision 2030 that’s being proactively spearheaded by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

“The kingdom's entry into the world records through the Hajj Hackathon confirms the aspirations of the Saudi youth for their country to be the gateway to technology in the region, pointing out that this is in line with the Kingdom's Vision 2030, as an ambitious vision that takes the Kingdom to a quantum leap in all aspects of life,” said Saud al Qahtani, the advisor to the Saudi Royal Court, and founder of the Saudi Federation for Cyberescurity, Programming and Drones (SAFCSP), which organized Hajj Hackathon.

In another statement released by the official Saudi Press Agency, al Qahtani lauded the event as it successfully attracted both “male and female developers from different countries,” including Saudi Arabia and its neighboring Gulf Arab states.

Al Qahtani, who is also the supervisor general of the Center for Studies and Information Affairs in Saudi Arabia, informed that Google supported the event and held several training workshops for participants.

The event’s roots are in Saudi Vision 2030’s guidelines to put Saudi tech talent in touch with and on an equal platform with their international peers, the CIC press release said. 

In his address on opening day, Internet entrepreneur Jimmy Wales lauded the strong presence of women at the event.

“I was really pleased to see a tweet from the organizers in support  of the female developers who are here,” Wales said, “and I am really cheering for some of the female developer teams to do really well…In tech, of course, we have a really serious problem with the lack of female talent throughout the entire industry, so it’s fantastic to see that, here, women are being supported in pursuing programming and technology as a career. I think it’s really an amazing and wonderful thing.”

Wales praised the reform process taking place in the kingdom and the plan to diversify the economy beyond oil. Maintaining that the reforms are not just economic, he noted the additional emphasis placed on the values of tolerance, education, knowledge and opening up to the world that infuse Vision 2030.

The hackathon was aimed at creating high-tech solutions to make visits to Saudi Arabia a more efficient and enjoyable experience, particularly during the annual Hajj pilgrimage, which is scheduled for August 19-24 this year and is expected to attract over two million Muslim visitors to the kingdom.

The three-day tech contest saw participants creating innovative software solutions for crowd management, food, health, finance, traffic control, travel, housing, communications, and waste management, to serve a pop-up city of about 2 million people.

The idea behind the exercise was “to tackle the challenge of producing creative and innovative solutions to the problems inherent in the arrival of approximately two million pilgrims annually to perform the Hajj,” according to a CIC statement. 

SAFCSP is offering cash prizes to the top three finishers, amounting to a total of 2 million Saudi riyals (533,270 US dollars approximately), to transform their ideas into application-based solutions. The first winner will receive 1 million Saudi riyals. The second prize carries a reward of 500,000 Saudi riyals and the third 350,000 Saudi riyals. Additionally, 150,000 Saudi riyals will be given as a prize for excellence.

Encouraged by the scale of participation and enthusiasm at the Jeddah hackathon, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak hinted that Saudi Arabia has the potential to create a new Silicon Valley.

“I am glad to see how large it [the event] is…Young people, getting together and having fun, doing what they are good at on computers,” he said.

“They turn out to be the ones that really come up with the big ideas... the few ideas here and there that become huge great divergence in life and create companies like Apple,” he remarked.

Wozniak said he hopes to revisit Saudi Arabia in five years to see how much progress they have made in the direction of building a new Silicon Valley.

“Five years is a very short timeframe when it comes to technology… I will revisit to see what steps have been made to encourage people,” he remarked, saying encouragement from the top, special tax advantages and venture capitalists are paramount in creating the right atmosphere for a tech revolution.

Wozniak also warned that there will be a lot of failures on the way to success. “There’s money everywhere you go, but not many want to invest in risky things,” he said, pointing out that tech startups are by nature risky.

“An awful lot of them fail or don't profit from results. But you got to have a lot of that [failure] if you're going to be like Silicon Valley,” Wozniak said.

[Cover: Saud al Qahtani, founder of the Saudi Federation for Cybersecurity, Programming and Drones (SAFCSP), which organised the Hajj Hackathon, receives the Guinness Certificate from Guinness World Records’ arbitrator Ahmed Jabr in Jeddah on August 1, 2018. /Photo via SAFCSP]