We went to #Map_IT in Krakow. A 24h memoir.
Before we begin, I’d like to tell you a couple of things. First, if you were looking for a chill story to get your mind off of a busy day, this one’s for you.
Second, if you haven’t been keeping up with our stories in the past months, I suggest you spend a few minutes reading this before anything else.
We went to Map_IT Krakow, and it was cool. And by cool we mean we really enjoyed it. Since I don’t want you to skip any details, I’ll take a quick turn back in time.
Techsylvania happened this summer, and as we are not the kind of people that settle for the common attendee badge, we went all in and signed up for the Hackathon, as the #WolfHackers.
Nothing new under the sun, we love bikes and you most probably already know this. Just as any valuable thing, we like to keep them safe, so we built an app that safeguards bikes.
The app notifies the users when the bike senses motion around it, enabling users to see its localisation in real time. This way, the bike is safe all the time and no one needs to to worry about those steady thieves wanting to get their hands on it.
The real deal is that we won the special prize offered by HERE, which meant that soon enough we were to embark on a journey to Map_IT in Krakow and this is the story we are going to tell you right now.
Oookay, okay, but what is #Map_IT Krakow?
To put it simple, it’s a Hackhaton — the kind of it where you sit and code and sit, and code, and code again and again. The point is that you don’t get to sleep at all, and after 24 of coding you end up with a (maybe) innovative product — like Hikey. And to us, this is real fun.
Developers around the world got together to tackle the potential of location intelligence, using some of HERE’s latest technology to build digital products that that solve a problem and improves life in the real world. These maters could have been environment, smart mobility, transportation, social responsibility or smart cities related.
We did not go there for the food — really
You might think that we did, and the photos might as well speak for themselves but we actually had this (we think) brilliant idea of an app that solves a major issue for hiking passionates.
Taaadaaaaaaaaaa — Hikey App
We started designing and building the app around safety.
Not only once we’ve heard about hikers that got lost on their way, and this is the specific problem we wanted to solve.
We came up with the idea of building a big forest of sensors or, self-sufficient distributed IoT networks that could eventually provide data and insights to improve and save lives. The network of bluetooth devices would then come together and track the hiker’s journey on a given map.
Our solution consisted of a platform and mobile app for managing and tracking tourist positions on various popular hiking trails using an infrastructure of connected beacons.
By knowing the progress of a hiker over a trail, the system can detect anomalies in the journey of the user and provide help, as fast as possible.
What were your biggest challenges?
Design the product in such way that it does not require a ton of money to be invested in. Besides this, we also had to think in terms of locating lost tourists as soon as possible even when their location is out of any network coverage.
Fast-forward 24 hours, and then this happened.
We went sightseeing
It was cold, and it started to rain then the rain rapidly transitioned into snow. Still, it took us a few hours and several streets to roam to find that Krakow is simply magical.
Think a modern and developing city in which tradition finds a way to welcome and converge with technology. With a great number of monuments that excellently fit the overall layout of the city, it seems to us that Krakow has never actually lost its majestic character.
Did we win? We always do.
This time we brought home a special prize from Garmin and lots of memories. If you had fun reading this make sure to follow us on Twitter — we’re pretty interesting folks to follow.
Until next time,
The Wolf Hackers (from left to right) Emil, Robi, Florin and Alex
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