Waves joins Odyssey hackathon ecosystem
Throughout the 2020 season, which will kick off on 7 November, Waves’ technologies will be available to Odyssey hackathon participants.
Hackathons play a major role in shaping the future of technology, exploring new ideas and finding real-world applications for innovative solutions.
Since 2017, Odyssey, a diverse global hackathon movement, has been run in Groningen, Holland, attracting thousands of people from all over the world to build technological solutions for a new and better society.
Through the Odyssey Innovation Program & Hackathon, corporate, governmental and scientific organizations explore and discover the future by building it — together with other relevant stakeholders, experts, and some of the brightest teams from all over the world.
At the Odyssey hackathon, new solutions to complex societal challenges are created with the use of technologies such as blockchain, AI and robotics. Odyssey’s underlying idea is that issues faced by contemporary society cannot be resolved by an individual organization or industry but require collaboration at a grassroots level and the creation of a new public digital infrastructure.
For the 2020 hackathon season, Waves is joining Odyssey’s ecosystem, making its technology available to hackathon participants.
Incidentally, Waves technology is no stranger at Odyssey hackathons. In April 2019, the Tradisys team was the hackathon’s winner in the Rethink Retirement track. Tradisys came up with a solution for a Dutch pension fund based on the Waves platform. This season, we hope to see Waves-based solutions presented by hackathon participants for a broad range of industries, from cybersecurity and critical infrastructure to nature and energy.
The Odyssey hackathons’ new season will kick off on 7 November with the Polaris Summit, hosted in collaboration with the Dutch Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations and TechLeap.NL (formerly StartupDelta) at the Hall of Knights in The Hague.
The event will gather challenge stakeholders, hackathon teams and international experts to collectively set the direction for the season.
Polaris speakers include three-times Nobel Peace Prize nominee Scilla Elworthy, MIT Senior Lecturer Otto Scharmer, and Internet Pioneer Pindar Wong, among others.
Scilla Elworthy is known for her work in developing effective dialogue between nuclear weapons policy-makers worldwide and their critics. She founded Peace Direct to fund, promote and learn from local peace-builders in conflict areas, and was advisor to Peter Gabriel, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Sir Richard Branson in setting up The Elders.
Otto Scharmer, who wrote Leading from the Emerging Future: From Ego-systems to Eco-system Economics, is an action researcher teaching innovation, learning and leadership at MIT, MITx U.Lab and the Presencing Institute. He has delivered award-winning leadership and innovation programs for clients including Alibaba, Daimler and Google.
Pindar Wong is the Founder of Hong Kong’s Smart Contracts Initiative that pioneered the Belt and Road Blockchain. He is a Bitcoin protocol enthusiast and volunteers to organise ScalingBitcoin.org. Wong co-founded the global blockchain research network Bsafe and organized Coala’s first Blockchain Workshop in Asia. Previously, he co-founded Hong Kong’s first licenced ISP in 1993 and was the first vice-chairman of ICANN.
Polaris is the perfect setting to introduce the full line-up of tracks and challenges for Odyssey Hackathon 2020. This year, you can expect challenges from a variety of corporate, governmental and non-profit stakeholders, including: Vattenfall, City of The Hague, City of Groningen, Enexis (Nature 2.0), KLM Cargo, Dutch Police, International Council of Environmental Law, Dutch Blockchain Coalition, and many others. Each of the challenges will be linked to at least one UN SDG goal, meaning that the solutions the teams build at the hackathon could contribute directly to global sustainable development.
Meanwhile, the Odyssey ecosystem is not just about applying new technologies or building new solutions. It’s about exploring new ways to collaborate, establishing relationships and building communities.
The 2020 season’s pivotal moment, the Odyssey Hackathon, is scheduled to be held in Groningen on 11–13 September. Team applications will be open from 20 January until 24 February. Sign up for the Odyssey newsletter to be notified when the application period opens, and remember to check our news and updates.
UPD: This article has been updated on March 30, 2020
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