TEKNOFEST, one of Turkey’s largest technology gatherings, opened its doors in Şanlıurfa this year with its Southeast leg. Trendyol, one of the official partners of the festival, brought together its e-commerce infrastructure, sports technologies and interactive simulations with the participants in a 200 square meter special experience area; while young engineers competed fiercely with artificial intelligence and data science models in the E-Commerce Competition organized in cooperation with the T3 Foundation.

Interactive Experience Area: From VR Volleyball to Seller Panel

The 200 square meter stand set up in the festival area in Şanlıurfa offered a comprehensive simulation for those curious about the inner workings of the e-commerce ecosystem. In the section prepared with the concept of “You Take Control of Your Business with the Seller Panel!”, visitors had the opportunity to directly test how all processes of a digital business, from order management to inventory tracking, are managed from a single center.

In the area that blended technology with sports, a special virtual reality (VR) experience inspired by the successes of the National Women’s Volleyball Team was featured. They showcased their volleyball skills by entering the virtual space with VR glasses, while in the “Digital Master” course, they took part in various tests that measured their technological skills and reflexes of the participants.

They Competed for an AI-Based Search Experience

In the technology development part of the event, the E-Commerce Competition, realized in partnership with Trendyol and the Turkish Technology Team Foundation (T3 Foundation), attracted attention. The focus of the competition was “natural language process and search intent analysis,” one of the most critical elements of contemporary e-commerce platforms. Young developers worked hard to develop algorithms that strengthen the semantic link between users’ search queries and the catalog of works.

Numerical Data of the Competition and Award-Winning Teams

During the intense 21-day preliminary marathon conducted on the Kaggle platform, participants constantly optimized the algorithms they developed:

• Number of Applications: 544 groups and 1,700 Competitors
• Model Testing: A total of 11,400 different predictions generated during the preliminary process
• Finalist Candidates: 10 teams and 32 Competitors who appeared before the jury

The teams that presented live demos of their projects to the jury won the large cash prizes. The teams that placed in the competition were ranked as follows:

• First: ArmaTerimi team with a prize of 150 thousand TL
• Second: Abdül Kolayadam team with a prize of 120 thousand TL
• Third: Dream Team with a prize of 100 thousand TL

Real Solutions to Real Problems

Although technology festivals often remain at the prototype development level, these types of sectoral competitions within the scope of TEKNOFEST allow young engineering candidates to work directly with industrial-scale knowledge sets. This competition, which models the search traffic generated by millions of Trendyol users, serves as a critical bridge in transforming theoretical knowledge into practical and scalable e-commerce solutions.