AI Towards Sustainability Hackathon

Women Techmakers, WomenHackCPH, Nordic.AI and BitGrit on International Women's Day, March 8th, organised hackathon "AI Towards Sustainability" in order to help tackle some of the most important global problems we face today. Hackathon was focused on solutions that are designed with inclusive, sustainable, and ethical principles in mind. My role in this hackathon was to be the mentor and the judge.

Hackathon was kicked off with an introduction by Sherry List, Ana Cidre and Maria Ovchinnikova. Participants got information why this hackathon is organised, overview of state of women in tech and introduction to UN sustainable development goals. Nana Bule gave and opening speech "AI Towards Sustainability", after which I gave a quick talk about hackathons and I explained what participants should expect from this hackathon. Sherry List gave an introduction to Azure Cognitive Services, followed with live coding session how to build Logic Apps with Azure Cognitive Services by Irina Kostina. Once teams were formed, participants pitched the ideas and started working on the projects.

At the end of the day participants presented their projects and judging team had hard time finding the best one between them. Projects we've seen were innovative and interesting, and it was amazing to see that teams managed to do so much in such a short time.

We've decided that first prize should go to team that built solution for finding green grass for cattle in Africa. This solution utilised Azure Cognitive Services in innovative way and tackled real life problem that farmers are facing.

It was great fun to attend this hackathon and I met a lot of interesting people. Special thanks for this hackathon goes out to organisers (Sherry List, Lisa Mallner, Ana Cidre and Maria Ovchinnikova) and sponsors (Momondo and Microsoft) who made it possible! Thanks for reading and happy International Women's Day!