Hack the Crisis Belgium edition / Overview & Winners
Over 500 passionate people have joined the online Belgium edition hackathon during the weekend of March 27–29.
Merely a couple of days after #SWCluj2020 I said YES to joining the Hack the Crisis Belgium team to help out with organizing an online hackathon, this time. Things have moved fast forward, as there was no time to spare. On April 19th we made the decision to do it, the next Monday morning we had the website up and running, and some mentors and partners already confirmed.
The support we received from the already existing online hackathon organizers’ community (started by Garage48 team)
was amazing (special thanks go to the Lithuanian team). In the 1st day of going online we had already 17 challenges registered on the CogniStreamer platform our partners at EY have kindly provided. On Tuesday morning our website crashed, due to high traffic. A few hours later, after moving to Interhost Solutions, everything went back to normal.
Quite an adventure from the beginning, the weekend itself went on pretty smoothly.
Hack the Crisis Belgium > numbers
By the end of the weekend our slack channel had over 500 people joined, and at the moment of posting this article the number is 600+. It’s nice to see the community still growing.
About 90 mentors have joined with their skills and expertise during the weekend. And a total of 27.7K messages were send between the participants, of which less than 20% of them were direct messages (talk about team work!).
Out of the 38 teams that registered on Friday evening, 33 have presented their ideas on Sunday. Here’s an overview of all the teams, in no particular order:
Hack the Crisis Belgium > teams
Covid-19 Card game — an innovative card-game for elderly people to raise awareness during the corona-crisis;
JUMPlab Golden Power — a collaboration with influencers and the gaming industry to reach out to their massive networks of followers and gamers, in order to educate the young generation in a responsible way;
Decentralized Personal Data Management — a platform that empowers people to gain access to their own personal data, and share it on an individual’s own terms;
HEPA 4 everyone — a solution to ramp up HEPA filter production at national level, or nationally enabled, in order to mass distribute efficiently masks, with priority given to first line workers;
Headminer — a B2B platform that creates a large network between companies with secured connections and a possibility to create hubs; it matches supply and demand in a structured and user friendly environment;
Doedegoe ?!— a campaign that wants to activate people to maintain this behavior on 3 levels: as an individual, as an organisation or a government; the campaign offers a visual for the little things people can do today to inspire, secure and award behaviors;
Savitas — a crowdsourced initiative using Esoptra’s Unique Identifiers technology for collecting the massive amounts of data required to trace individually scoped infection sources inside a population;
Safety goggles with a view — a proposal to import standard safety goggles and use them in the medical field for low risk caretakers so that face shields (which are in shortage) go only to high risk caretakers;
Facti.fi — a chrome extension to scan people’s feeds and spot fake news; Content Businesses (social media, newspapers, media outlets) can use the API to proactively check the content they’re spreading;
Kommune — a creative content platform that uses a gamification system to make new and existing challenges more fun and convenient, while complying with the governmental restrictions in place;
Local2Local — a matchmaking platform that connects local businesses with residents for volunteer courier rides;
Emergency Homecare — a solution focused on the patient follow-up after the patient has been identified by its general practitioner as suspicious to be infected by Covid-19; it proposes to follow the patients realtime to determine if and when they should go to the Emergency services;
ikzoekeenleraar.be — a solution that enables students to instantly ask questions to the experts via an online platform when they are stuck while studying;
Relaunch — an online simulator to help restaurants and bar owners better understand financial planning and project revenues, profits and cashflows, in the light of the current crisis;
WeCare — simple, accessible and reliable app to asses corona probability in someone; an easy self diagnose A.I. powered solution, that offers advice and suggestions for further actions;
Analysis Mode — a puzzle-game to empower non-scientific people to join forces & fight diseases by contributing to the vaccine discovery, thus accelerating pharmaceutical research;
Spread The Queue — a web app that encourages a more evenly distributed social distancing by following a personalized routine for movement schedule that can lead to shorter queues and reduced shopping times, minimized travel time and maximized social distancing;
Back2School — a platform that helps schools publicize their needs of computers; the schools have access to an administration interface where they can update their own web page with the amount of computers they already got and the amount they still need, and people can donate;
Companion box — an actual box that is connected to the television and the local internet, and provides the people with contact to their peers; with just a single press of the button, a connection is made and a video chat is opened on the TV screen;
Deducate — a platform that connects students that need to make a decision on what to study next, with either current of former students of the bachelors/masters they are thinking of;
Covidbot — an interactive Quiz platform that improves knowledge and behavior; it is gamified and gives rewards to restart the conversation after policy changes;
radiUs — a solution to monitor social distancing between employees in a certain company via a high accuracy indoor positioning Ultra Wide Band (UWB) technology;
SocialTV — an open platform available for app & device builders, that leverages existing communication habits and offers a secure and non-intrusive seamless experience;
Cu4Cov — a solution that aims to decrease the spreading of the viruses via surfaces, by using copper as a natural antimicrobial material to coat the highly touched surfaces;
WickED — a free inspirational add-in where educational content is created by a community of empowering role models (social media influencers, famous Belgian people, etc) to motivate, support and engage students and teachers with their inspiring videos;
Go Test Yourself — a platform where people can find information about home test kits and buy them; the platform facilitates sharing the results of the home test kits online, and the bulk data is available to everyone via an API;
Artists Unlimited — a platform that allows artists perform live-streamed music content and generate new revenue streams; it aims to unite everybody around the music scene, and create new digital ways of interaction between artists and their fans;
Virtual Visits — it allows photographing diverse locations in 360° and enables virtual visits for potential customers, ensuring business continuity for many impacted businesses;
Challenge Bakers — a mobile app to make, send and join fun challenges with friends, by putting bounty at stake which takes the form of a contribution to help solving the crisis and its consequences;
Sendavoice — a solution that allows anyone to send a voice message to an elder; people can record the message, select its language, pay a small fee, and the message is sent to a random older person’s landline;
matcheroo — a matchmaking tool for bringing together any 2 parties that need each other;
Panda micro-coaching — a solution that bring traditional coaching a step further by (a) making it scalabile and affordable, and (b) allowing everyone to be aware of what’s going on inside the company through knowledge sharing and data collection;
Scan & Go — a solution that requires no app, minimal effort, and no data retention; it involves scanning a QR-code which is simply registered as a data point with a timestamp and location, by every person in a queue; it helps people avoid crowded moments and places, thus reducing the risk of infection that is present in a queue.
Hack the Crisis Belgium > prizes
The winning teams got:
- €15k worth tailor made EYnovation advice for the 1st team;
- €5k worth communication & video advice from Storyme, for the 2nd team;
- €2.5k worth tailor made Lemon advice for the 3rd place;
Aside from that, all the teams have received:
- 6 months free easy to use and automated CRM to manage prospects, partners & customers by Salesflare;
- 1 year free hosting from Lemon;
- 1 hour mentorship from the EY team.
Hack the Crisis Belgium > finalists
Out of the 33 pitches received on Sunday, 10 have made it into the finals:
Analysis Mode
We Care
Ikzoekeenleraar.be
Companion Box / Imagine Lab
Fire Breathing Rubber Duckies
Emergency Homecare
Go Test Yourself
Panda Training
HEPA 4 everyone
Facti.fi
Hack the Crisis Belgium > winners
1st place: Go Test Yourself
2nd place: We care
3rd place: Analysis Mode
What next
Teams that want to take the next step with their projects can join The Global Hack next weekend (April 9–12) and also the Pan-european online hackathon happening on the weekend of April 24–26.
Hack the Crisis Belgium > team
Lieven Janssen, Mattias Van Nimmen, Jelle Jacobs, Rutger Bevers, Claire Tobback and myself.
