This year's virtual IoT hackathon Kragujevac is over

04.12.2020

After four days of intensive work, the IoT hackathon was successfully completed and the winners were announced

Within the project "City Experiment Fund", which is implemented by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Serbia with the support of the Slovak Ministry of Finance, a study of the needs of people with disabilities was performed and key problems and challenges encountered in everyday life were identified. Also, the implementation of a digital platform for civic participation is nearing completion. The goal of the project is to include people with disabilities and the elderly in the planning and decision-making processes, but also the sustainable integration of Internet-connected intelligent devices and technologies to improve access to city services and administration for people with disabilities and the elderly.

Under the auspices of this project, the ICT cluster of Central Serbia successfully organized this year's virtual IoT hackathon in Kragujevac in cooperation with the Business Innovation Center Kragujevac and the Forum of Young People with Disabilities Kragujevac, with the support of the City Administration of Kragujevac. The entire event was organized using the ZOOM platform, while internal communication with the teams was done using the Slack collaboration tool.

After the application deadline, 9 teams were selected to take part in the Hackathon, of which the 3 best teams were awarded.

30.11.2020. - Day 1 of Hackathon

At the beginning of the day, Hackathon was opened with introductory lectures by representatives of the City of Kragujevac, UNDP, Business Innovation Center Kragujevac, Forum of Youth with Disabilities Kragujevac and ICT cluster of Central Serbia. Representatives of 9 teams, participating in the Hackathon, had the opportunity to present themselves and the final part was scheduled for the Q&A session. After the lecture, during the day, several ZOOM meetings were organized and support was provided to the teams by assigned mentors, experts from various fields.

01.12.2020 - Day 2 of Hackathon

On the second day, intensive training was organized on the topic of successfully making pitch presentations, in preparation for the final day before the jury, which is planned for Thursday 3.12. Ivana Stančić from Smart kolektiv, gave a great lecture on the topic of making an efficient pitch presentation, and later in the day held numerous consultations on this topic with the teams. Until the end of the day, the teams worked on their solutions, but also pitch presentations, the first versions of which they submitted the next, third day of Hackathon until 6 pm for commenting in order to finalize the final event, live presentation on Thursday 3.12. at 6 p.m.

02.12.2020. - Day 3 of Hackathon

03.12.2020. - Closing event

After commenting and providing mentoring services on making pitch presentations on the third day, the first part of the final day of the Hackathon, the teams used it to refine their ideas and finalize and practice their 3-minute pitch presentations. In the second part of the day, in the evening, the final event was held starting at 6 pm and lasted for 2 and a half hours. The first half hour was used to represent five members of the jury from the following institutions / organizations: 2 representatives of the City of Kragujevac, 1 representative of UNDP, 1 representative of the Forum of Youth with Disabilities Kragujevac and 1 representative of the Business Innovation Center Kragujevac.After the jury members presented themselves, the ideas were presented by the teams through 3-minute pitch presentations. Each of the presentations was followed by questions from the jury members, after which the jury retired to a separate ZOOM room (breakout room). The jury scored each of the teams according to the following criteria: