The United Nations World Innovation Day Hackathon 2023 recently brought together a great variety of smart en creative people from across the globe. This event, held annually, is a celebration of the power of innovation to transform our world and drive sustainable development.
A Global Gathering of Innovators
The Hackathon, held in honor of World Innovation Day, attracted participants from diverse backgrounds – students, professionals, tech enthusiasts, entrepreneurs, and more. With the world grappling with numerous challenges, the Hackathon served as a platform for these innovators to showcase their creativity and problem-solving skills. I entered the hackathon as one of the mentors, specifically regarding Oracle specific topics.
Throughout the weekend I was monitoring the different slack, to see if there were any requests for help in my area of expertise.
Tackling Real-World Problems
The event focused on developing innovative solutions to address the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set by the United Nations. Participants were tasked with hacking solutions for real-world problems, from climate change and poverty to health and education.
There were around 70 teams who entered the hackathon and there were 2 streams where they could pick from. The first one was gpt4good and the other one was data4good. Most of the teams entered in the gpt4good stream. Could this be because of the GPT hype that is going on?
So one challenge is all about open data, partnerships and bridging the divide between public and private organisations. (Sustainable Development Goal #17 – Global Partnerships), whereas the other challenge is all about generating innovative, for-good solutions centred around transparency, decentralisation and security.
The teams would get 2 bonuspoints added to their score if they decide to use Oracle APEX in their solutions.
A Showcase of Very Cool Ideas
Participants were given around 72 hours to brainstorm, develop, and pitch their innovative solutions. Numerous industry experts and mentors guided the participants throughout their journey, providing valuable insights and advice. I was honoured to be one of the mentors, focussing on Oracle technology.
The Hackathon was a thrilling display of innovation, with teams working tirelessly to develop their projects. Ideas ranged from AI-powered applications for tracking carbon emissions to blockchain solutions for improving transparency in supply chains.
Finally
This particular hackathon focused heavily on new developers – University, early career professionals, and so on… I was able to help out not just in a technical area of expertise, but also in some more generic areas regarding development practices. The fact that Oracle was a sponsor gave participants a clear view and access to Oracle’s free tier and free 23c DB. This allowed them to play around with it, supported by some great minds form the Oracle ecosphere and some of the available Oracle collaterals.
For me personally it was very cool to get some hands-on with Open AI combined with Oracle. More info can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myqEFRTwlRk
Winners will be announced by the end of the month, so stay tuned for that!
Next year I will rejoin, because I had fun and it was great to meet and work with people from all over the world.
