Coronavirus outbreak changed our entire world within weeks. However, there are still some people, companies and even countries that are willing to stop the negative effects of the pandemic. Among them are DO OK, Google, Amazon and Microsoft, companies that cooperated with Polish Prime Minister’s Office to iniciate a hackaton  HackCrisis: Tech for Good that is to find the solutions to numerous problems caused by COVID-2019.

A few days that can make a difference

Charity hackathon was an initiative of DO OK that was intended to solve the increasing number of problems caused by the pandemic. Soon enough this idea was apprieciated by the biggest high-tech companies in the world, such as Google, Amazon and Microsoft. The event was also supported by Polish Prime Minister’s Office that admitted to have a significand number of inquiries related to any means of helping people and organizations in those unfavorable circumstances.

Hackaton took place from 17th to 22nd March. In just 5 days almost 2000 people decided to join the contest, of which a few hundred registered within first few minutes. That enormous interest allowed companies, teams and individual developers to come up with 109 ideas to fight coronavirus. Those proposals were divided into three categories:

  • Isolation – how to help those who need to stay at home,
  • Education – how to use school closures to students’ and teachers’ advantage
  • Facts and data – how to fight with disinformation and fake news.

Dozens of ideas, only a few winners

Tens of interesting projects were created during this remarkable event. For example, the participats were working on monitoring network for quarantined patients, a program capable of verifying the news on social media and news platform for local authorities. Despite this diversity, every category could only have one winner.

Prize in category Isolation went to a project called Mom’s working right now. It was an app offering a number of extracurricular activities for children and it was created to allow their parents to work in peace (at least for some time). The best Education idea was a platform created by FreeClass team. This software was meant to provide additional educational support for children studying at home. Prize for the best project in category Facts and Data was given to Covid Genomics – a program allowing the scientists to anticipate further mutation of coronavirus.

Hackathon – what it’s all about?

Hackathons are programming marathons, often held on weekends or – in the longer version – over the week. The teams or programmers participating in the events are to create an application or program that can solve the problem chosen by the organizers. Hackathons can be organized both as external competitions and as a method of boosting innovations in IT companies.

Ailleron also uses Hackathons in its operations. These events allow us to use of participants’ creativity to come up with innovative solutions for clients. So far, such programming marathons at Ailleron have raised various topics: from banking services to applications dedicated to specific industries. During the February hackathon, our developers had the opportunity to face the problem of leasing – and they coped with it perfectly, which you can read about in the article about Fintech Hackathon.