Hacking the crisis also known as Covid-19
People all around the world are searching for fresh and innovative ideas to tackle the problems caused by the coronavirus outbreak. A little over a week ago, Junction — together with the Ghost Company, Business Finland, Republic, Lataamo, and many others — organized an online hackathon with an aim to create new, innovative solutions to the challenges ahead.
The amount of engagement and excitement from everyone involved, despite the weird situation we are living in at the moment, exceeded all our expectations. Here are a few key takeaways from Hack the Crisis Finland.
Excitement is contagious.
When the event was launched on Wednesday 18 March, two days before its beginning, we were still a bit unsure how things would turn out, to be honest. However, there were already over 300 people in the Slack workspace the next morning. In a few hours from that, the number had more than doubled, and after that it only kept rising (and it still does!).
Amid chaos there is also opportunity, and in these times when bad news is dominating headlines, reminders that not everything is in ruins understandably attract people and inspire them to take action.
Hackathons are truly for everyone.
Ask for nothing, receive everything, right? A little over half of the participants were participating in a hackathon for the first time ever, and since no prior hackathon or coding experience was required, people of all backgrounds, ages, educations and nationalities joined forces to discuss ideas and create solutions. Healthcare professionals, students, developers, company leaders — you name it, they were all represented.
Pressure fuels success.
Although the whole idea of hackathons is to create and deliver something beneficial within demanding time constraints, this time the submission deadline wasn’t the only thing causing pressure. The whole society is racing against the virus, and the demand for new solutions is very real, which could definitely be sensed in the atmosphere, but which also resulted in great submissions.
Sense of community can be built online as well.
Working towards a common goal brings people closer, and doing so completely remotely doesn’t prevent the feeling of togetherness. A community is not tied to being physically in a location, it is a place of belonging.
During the weekend, over 60 hours of mentoring was given via just those video calls the organizers know about. We can only imagine the total innumerable hours the teams spent together chatting and processing their ideas among each other.
The top 5 projects
All projects were evaluated based on their innovativeness, feasibility, viability and possible impact on the society.
“Solving researchers’, decision makers’ and citizens’ lack of knowledge with one service.”
“Designed to help teachers to connect and share during social isolation during the corona outbreak. A tool to encourage kids to embrace digitalization as part of their day-to-day school life.”
“This simple yet effective solution allows people to buy gift cards from their favourite restaurants during the coronavirus period.”
“The service helps (risk group) people to move outside by giving information on areas where there are less people.”
“The Advanced Scenario Planner is a free, browser-based service with a variety of future scenarios created by industry experts and crowd.”
Other cool projects to check out
Want to see more? Head over to Junction App to browse through all the projects.
