Hackathon 2018 – the best marathons worth taking part in
This year promises to be unique in terms of creativity. Here are the most interesting hackathons in 2018 that avid lovers of technology and creators of innovations can’t miss! In order to take part in one of these design marathons it is enough to have passion, willingness to take the challenge and… a brilliant idea, which will change everything.
Hackathons, meaning design marathons, are events organised in order to quickly develop technologically innovative solutions, which will be applied in different areas of life and business.
Unlike classic methods of innovation implementation, where long months and years are spent on mysterious research and prototyping, hackathons are open for everyone and they last only several hours up to several days. Such form of the event makes the participants brainstorm, which shortly results in developing brilliant and, what is important, efficient concepts. Thanks to hackathons now we can use several different applications, which make our lives easier and drive business, culture, science and education, economy, sport and many other domains.
The winners of hackathons receive cash prizes, which they can spend on implementing their idea. They also gain recognition and, what often follows, interesting job offers from the leading companies around the world. Many teams that participate in design marathons decide to establish their own start-up. There is a lot at stake — so it is time to choose the most interesting hackathon 2018 worth taking part in.
NVIDIA® Jetson™ Developer Challenge
Money, graphic cards from the NVIDIA TITAN Xp top line, NVIDIA Jetson TX2 developer kit, educational program in Deep Learning Institute, fame and possibility to present your solution on a fully paid GPU Technology Conference in the Silicon Valley — all these can be won by the best developers, engineers, scientists, start-ups and students who took up the NVIDIA challenge. The voting for the best project is underway, in which your vote counts as well!
Anita's Moonshot Codeathon
Hackathon organised by AnitaB.org is addressed only to women or — as perversely emphasised by the event organiser — to those who identify themselves as women. It covers creating technological innovations in interdisciplinary domains. The participants focus mainly on solving socio-cultural and socio-economic problems of a given community in the area of culture, education, technology, politics or religion. Individual contestants (one can join one of the teams) and teams (max. 5 people) can submit to the hackathon. Something that will surely please women who have lots of ideas but are not necessarily a know-it-all of programming — experience in coding is not required! The organiser rates, among others, the idea’s creativity, the quality of work involved in the project and the influence of the solution on the community’s needs. Total prize pool of a value of $ 27,250 includes a scholarship program for the winning team, Computer Lab Raspberry Pi, VR Oculus Rift and Touch kits, tickets to Grace Hopper Celebration 2018, attractive gadgets and participation certificates.
International Women Hackathon 2018
Another proposition for women (not necessarily programmers) without even leaving your home! For the International Women Hackathon 2018 is held entirely on-line — it is enough to register on a website, invite your friends, build your team and create an innovative program together. The contestants will fight for cash prizes of a total value of $ 5,000 while designing applications that support education, economic freedom (in particular in terms of strengthening the position of entrepreneurial women on the labour market), health and safety. The organiser is open to ideas and allows also for creating tools which will support other areas, which are important to be developed in the contestants’ opinion.
Blockcheingers Hackathon 2018
Blockcheingers, which is held in Groningen in Holland, is one of the world’s biggest and certainly the most thematically expanded hackathons. 64 teams take part in it, creating innovative solutions in 8 different domains such as the future of pensions, public safety, power engineering, health, digital infrastructure, economics or digital identity. Within the marathon the crucial problems of global community, for which it is needed to find together the best remedies, are elaborated. People from different specialties are invited to participate in the event: programmers, designers, business advisors, economists, marketing specialists, science representatives. The awaiting tasks are not easy, but the prize motivates: the best teams can win even € 100,000 in cash!
Baltathon – Gdynia
Several fantastic and socially-needed hackathons are held outside of Poland. Luckily for those who can’t afford long journeys, there are also quite a few interesting propositions in our country and nearby. One of them, addressed to people who appreciate the natural and cultural heritage of southern Baltic Sea, is Baltathon. This hackathon is held in sequence in Gdynia, Klaipeda and Malmö within a project BalticMuseums: Love IT!, realised by museums, touristic attractions, institutes and IT specialists from Poland, Denmark, Sweden, Lithuania and Germany. The aim of the hackathon is to create an application based on gamification, which would translate into bigger tourists’ interest in Baltic countries’ culture. Not only attractive prizes are guaranteed, but also lots of great fun and possibility to visit beautiful cities located on the Baltic Sea shore.
Hackathon VR_Codzienność
When in 2012 the world heard about goggles for virtual reality for the first time, so far unknown possibilities were opened. Nowadays, VR is present almost in every home, but it is still a new technology which gives countless possibilities of interesting application. Those who already have ideas on how to apply it should go to Katowice in March to join the Hackathon VR_Codzienność (VR_Daily Life). The name of the marathon is not accidental, as its participants — individual contestants or teams of up to 5 people — will work on creating an application, simulation or VR tool, which will improve the daily functioning of each of us. Fantastic prizes are waiting for the winners — to be one of them you need to make sure that your project is innovative, useful, aesthetic and has development, social and business potential.
Hackathon AI
This Hackathon is held in several Polish cities: Warsaw, Poznań and Katowice, within the EMEA Coders League. It is entirely devoted to the concept of artificial intelligence. And even though it does not compare to the event organised by NVIDIA in terms of its scope, prestigious prizes or level of difficulty, it is worth the interest. A fascinating university debate and full of great fun mini competition in creating basic AI bots with valuable prizes are waiting for the participants. This hackathon attracts people who are passionate about artificial intelligence, as well as those who had nothing to do with it so far and want to change it. After all, at some point the first step has to be taken in order to challenge in the future the most prominent minds, which create the new, better future for all of us during the world famous hackathons.
