The 13th — 14th June saw an intense couple of days for 13 teams of London developers. On the floor of TeckXLR8 — London Tech Week’s flagship event, bringing together 8 conferences, 300 exhibitors, live demonstrations, numerous networking opportunities….and a hackathon!
On Wednesday morning lots of bright-eyed tech enthusiasts made their way to ExCel London to work solidly for two days to be in with a chance to a cash prize or mentorship programmes from the sponsors.
The participants were invited to pitch — 60 seconds on stage to explain their idea and to call out for skill sets to complete their team — whether that be developer, designers or business minds to help make their ideas come to fruition. By 11.00am, the ideas were set, the teams were formed, and the coding had well and truly begun.
The teams had six challenges to choose from which were set by the sponsors and were within the 3 themes of IoT, Greentech and Smart Mobility. Teams also had the opportunity to use the Digi.me platform — which holds all of your personal data safely in one place — a perfect tool for the current climate following GDPR.
Workshops on using the platform and how to give a great pitch helped the teams use the limited time they had wisely, and ideas soon became projects ready to be shown to the jury and onlookers at the expo.
One o’clock on the Thursday saw the end of coding, and the jury arrived expectantly, ready to see the 13 projects on the hackathon stage. Each team had just 3 minutes to present, and a 2 minute Q&A from the jury, whose questions ranged from data sourcing to human behavioural patterns. Lots of onlookers were drawn in to view the pitches after popping by over the 2 days in awe of the concentration and dedication from the teams.
The demos over, now came the difficult bit for our jury — made up of Urban-X and digi.me superstars. 5 prizes were up for grabs, but after much deliberation and adoration of all of the ideas and hard work, it was time to go back to the stage and make the winning announcements…
The Grand Prize of £2,000 was awarded to: ACTIVATE!!
Their solution integrated personalised health, social and medical data to suggest tailored, achievable exercises based on your health profile, by combining professional recommendations and information from large data sources drawn from people with a similar health profile.
The Runner’s up taking home £1,000 was: GIVENERGY!
This solution responded to the problem of energy poverty by allowing crowdfunded payments for energy bills for those living in energy poverty but could be applicable to any other vulnerable community.
Winner of the Urban X Mentoring Programme was: F00D!
This solution was planning ahead for the use of IBM’s future micro-controllers to be placed inside your fridge which you can check in real-time from your phone — paired with personal health and social data this would address health problems linked to eating and reduce food waste!
Winners of the Digi.Me growth programme was: ZENROUTES!
This app detected the ideal commuter route, taking into account Zen levels.
The Digi.Me Mentoring prize went to: GUIDEME!
This smart navigation solution paired Computer Vision with external factors to help visually impaired people get around without the need for a cane or guide dog. Using tensorflow and cracking the challenge of determining the distance to the next obstacle, GuideMe also tapped into BeMyEyes API connecting users to volunteers to guide them in busy situations.
The other teams were also brilliant and we applaud everyone’s fantastic ideas and use of the provided Digi.me SDKs and original ideas!
Street Bytes — Optimising unused roaming data by allowing sale to others who need it and don’t want to hand over personal details to “Free Wifi”
Live Assistant — all in one assistant taking care of ALL your smart devices, voice assistants and integrating personal data
H20 app — optimising water consumption by identifying water leaks and alerting you to how much you could be saving
Take My Place — smart parking app with a difference- it rewards users with blockchain tokens gamifying the whole experience!
Digi.me Aggregator — scoring artists based on huge amounts personal data showing fans their true value.
MiMi — music app understanding your taste from your headphones, your spotify data, and alerts you to local concerts linked to your taste.
WoTT — IOT security solution that allows you to block external people accessing your devices and ensuring robust security.
We Can — Encouraging aluminium recycling by rewarding recyclers!
All in all — it was an exhausting challenge but the teams worked relentlessy throughout the 2 days! Well done everyone! #HackXLR8
