Success of the Sumy team "OK TOWN" at the Hackathon 2.0 Hack the Culture by House of Europe

TheHack the Culture 2.0 Hackathon was organized in cooperation with House of Europe, Goethe-Institut Ukraine, and Digitizing.Space with the support of the European Union in Ukraine.

On July 16-18, people from all over Ukraine had the opportunity to prove themselves at the House of Europe Hackathon. This event was organized to find solutions at the intersection of culture and technology that can be applied in the changing world of vaccination passports and new strains.

103 teams registered for the Hackathon, which together included more than 1000 participants from different parts of our country. For three days, they developed their ideas under the guidance of 78 mentors.

The team OK TOWN decided to develop an audio tour for the city of Sambir, Lviv region, in response to the tourism crisis caused by COVID-19. As a result, all museums, galleries, and other cultural centers in Ukraine can contactOK TOWN and request a unique audio tour for them, thus increasing their visibility in Ukraine and abroad. With the help of mentors, the team developed and presented their project to the judges for an intensive two days.

The process of determining the winners included two stages. At the first stage, participants filmed a two-minute video and sent it to be evaluated by professional experts. And at the second stage, the 10 finalist teams made a two-minute pitch in which they had to talk about the team as a whole and the progress it had made during the hackathon, as well as answer the jury's questions. This year, the competition was so fierce that the experts allowed as many as 13 teams to reach the final (while there were supposed to be 10), 11 of which eventually received funding in the amount of €1,000 to €3,000. The team "OK TOWN " consisting of Olena Kasyan, Yanina Grechikhina, Artem Rudychenko, Oleksandr Mazurkevych and Victoria Godik won a grant of €1000. According to the team members, they will use the funds to improve the marketplace to promote local tourism businesses in Ukraine, as well as to develop new audio tours.

In 2020, the Hack the Culture Hackathon, initiated by the Goethe-Institut in Ukraine, sparked new partnerships, helped find a number of anti-crisis projects, and gathered more than 1300 participants and 210 ideas to help the industry survive the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. These are record numbers for ideation and hackathons in Ukraine.

House of Europe website

https://www.facebook.com/houseofeurope.org.ua

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Author Artem Rudychenko