Microsoft Austria was the host of a hackathon aiming at finding an IT solution to support refugees which are stranded in Austria. I took the chance to participate and want to provide you a brief insight.
People who fled from home due to war are arriving in a country with a different cultural behavior and lifestyle, which can lead to a lot of issues, questions and information gaps. About 50 developers voluntarily contributed their skills to find THE idea to help. The given time range for development was two days for creating an idea, work on it or develop a plan for further development. It could be a website, a mobile or web application and as well as a well-structured idea for further implementation.
The event itself was kicked off with a presentation on the current state and a deep dive into the world and life as a refugee, into organizations who are already taking care and trying their best to keep this situation under control. A representative of the Austrian Red Cross gave an honest insight and helped the developers to really understand the situation around the poor conditions at the camps, what the refugees are doing and which issues arose for those organizations. The Austrian minister for foreign affairs, Sebastian Kurz, sent a video message to Microsoft and the participating developers about the political situation and a thankful message for their support.
Finding ideas was the next step. This was realized with a brainstorming session where participants had a chance to present any idea. At the end of the session there were 14 ideas on the table. Together we choose the best six ideas and separated into teams to develop the idea and start working on it. The aim was not to deliver a fully functional and perfect solution without any flaws. To the contrary, it was more important to take this topic serious and think about an idea which could help and reach the needs of refugees. After dividing the teams and selecting the topics, the development started and people spread into different areas and rooms.
This being my first hackaton, it was a very nice experience and I enjoyed collaborating with that many people from different companies, fields of work and interest.
The ideas which the teams were working on were:
- Salam@: This IT solution should help medical professionals as well as doctors to create a diagnose over the distance using the Microsoft HoloLens to improve the healthcare situation in camps and provide faster and better processing.
- Cv2go: Refugees have no experience in creating a CV according to Austrian standards. Therefore, a team worked on a simple mobile solution with an easy to use interface which enables the users to generate an easy CV after providing some information.
- Refugee Network: This solution should help the users to get familiar with their new environmental settings. It allows people to attend language courses, attend some social events like sports and find a job.
- Refugee Information Hub: This solution provides a single interface in the form of a chat-window. Behind this solution is a bot which bundles all the needed information. The information flow and amount of questions, especially at the beginning, is overwhelming and this solution should help users to get faster and easier access to the right information.
- Refugee Media: Refugee Media is an online platform prepared by refugees for refugees, which provides multilingual information on relevant events in their home countries and in Austria in an intelligible form and explains differences between culturally influenced perspectives.
- E-Learning Platform: This solution is an interactive learning platform with gamification elements, which delivers a language course to enable the users to learn German in an easy way. To motivate the users, it is possible to collect points along the process and exchange them for any useful goods and establish an easier way of integration.
The event itself embodied the possibility to deliver ideas and solutions for a good use and also enabled people to help in a different way in a crisis like this. Every participant enjoyed the stay and was pleased by meeting new people and gaining a better understanding of the situation itself as well.
You can find more impressions in the following Sway.
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