Hackathon for change

Around 1,000 Trimble engineers globally will participate in their annual internal hackathon later this year says Stuart Ralston, Engineering Manager for Emerging Technologies. It’s a great way to give companies (and cross-functional teams) an innovative edge.

I got to hang out with Stu at the recent GovHack event in the ōtautahi, Christchurch hub. I must say we tried to host this back in 2021 but had to navigate a Covid-19 Level 4 belated pivot, which I posted about previously here.?

With problem statements launched on a Friday evening, teams form around open-source data to deliver a broad range of innovative solutions 46 hours later. This year’s problem statements for Aotearoa, NZ included finding solutions to the annual Citizen Survey put out by local councils, digital twin modelling for environmental improvement initiatives, combatting disinformation, and reducing carbon emissions in households.?

The great thing about GovHack is that a range of skillsets are required in a team, including the ability to create compelling video content. To this end, I quite like the 'Helfy' AI-powered recipe app for reducing carbon emissions and providing sustainability information to consumers. This concept leverages a complex set of generative AI and static data to create recipes from your pantry, create recipe images and collect information from local markets.

Last year's winner Dirty Watts came up with a creative way to view energy usage in Aotearoa, empowering households to be able to choose clean energy times and visualising that with a coloured lightbulb. You can check out their website here, and their video entry below.

Stu is a believer in serendipitous collisions, which come from bringing people together. The more diverse the group - hackers, creatives, thinkers, doers, industry, changemakers - the greater the impact.