HKD 2.1 will take place next week on Saturday 18 February at Ulster University’s Magee campus. The event is partnered with its headline sponsor, EY, and delivery partner Queen’s University Belfast.
Bringing together over 100 hackers from all over Northern Ireland, the event will take place in the North West for the first time.
This event will be themed around travel in Northern Ireland, with teams working together to try and optimize the transport network. After being given data, the hackers will identify areas for opportunity in the sector, perhaps areas that are underserved in the region, and looking at things like population, jobs, unemployment rates in areas and other connected socio-economic factors.
Although this event will provide plenty of fun, many hackathons have resulted in huge business opportunities. Businesses like Facebook and Twitter often use this concept to create ideas and a company called Carousel founded their success from a hackathon in Singapore in 2012, with the business now being valued at £1.1bn.
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Explaining the event, Gareth Kelly, Data & Analytics Partner at EY Belfast, said: "A hackathon is usually hosted by a tech company or organizations, where programmers and innovators get together for a very intense short period of time to try and collaborate on a project. So it's a real atmosphere of working together rapidly. Sometimes without sleep and generally lasts 24 hours. Now, we're not going to go that far with this hackathon. But for me, HacKeD is about finding solutions to problems that exist in our society. They can be problems that exist today or they can be a future problems.”
He continued: “It's really centred around innovation. It's about pushing the boundaries of what's possible. Those solutions can be with crazy ideas or practical ideas and it's really about pushing those boundaries. When I think of a hackathon, it really boils down to crowdsourcing, the best minds out of the market to really collaborate and prototype at scale. And that's really what we want to achieve in this hackathon as well as, by building relationships and building a network, and really trying out new things in a very controlled but rapid paced environment.”
Speaking about who the event is open to, Gareth said: “This is something that I'm really passionate about. It's not just for software engineers or data professionals. We want people from all walks of life and all ideas. I think the best hackathons bring together the mind and machine, so innovative ideas from people from different backgrounds, while also bringing together deep technical expertise. So if you think you have an idea and you can make a difference, please attend the hackathon."
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Richard Willis from About Blank Creative, who deliver HKD (HacKeD) Hackathons, said: “We are delighted to be bringing HKD to the North West region for the first time. The event will see over 100 hackers from Ulster University, Queen’s University Belfast, and Atlantic Technological University (in LetterKenny) coming together, as well as more experienced hackers from industry.
One of the attractions for our attendees is they will get to meet with peers from other universities and colleges, as well as people who are already working. They will learn from each other, build their network and importantly, have a lot of fun doing it”.
Richard continued, “The challenges set by Gareth and his team at EY will provide our hackers with the opportunity to think about and work on conceptual solutions that have the potential to create real, tangible impact on people’s lives. These hackathons never fail to inspire and the solutions we see, time and again, are no less than brilliant."
Chris Roe, Manager in Tech Consulting at EY Northern Ireland has previously attended a HKD event and said: “It was a fantastic day from start to finish. At EY we know that building the highest-performing teams are achieved through nurturing better leadership and the hackathon offered participants the opportunity to share their talents and knowledge, develop their skills, grow in confidence, network and have fun. I’m looking forward to seeing the hackathon community again on the 18th February and seeing the innovative solutions they come up with."
To find out more about the event and to register, visit here.
