The Garage48 Open & Big Data 2016 was a sensational hackathon to celebrate data science and the art of visualisation of data. The event attracted data scientists, developers, designers and project managers from all over the world with one goal – harness the already-available data and bring it to life. On Sunday's grand finale 17 teams showcased their prototypes to the audience, members of the jury and to the audience at home watching the live stream.
The event was partly organised in co-operation with at the Institute of Computer Science (University of Tartu). The institute is home to a lot of big data oriented research and was now the host for this event. Actually, many of the participants have studied in the same building and now they got the chance to really challenge what they have learned so far. The Head of the institute Jaak Vilo was very happy with the outcome of the event and even claimed that the teams did the work of 3 years in just 48 hours!
One of the big supporters of the event, Planet OS, provided unlimited access to its Datahub, the fast-growing data catalog of weather, climate and environmental data with high-quality open data from premiere data publishers and APIs for data access. Rainer Sternfeld, founder and CEO at Planet OS, was happy about the initiative and put out a special Data Challenge for the participants.
“Seeing teams building solutions that improve our lives using open data is a great example what creative minds can do when you give them the right tools and the right information. Good to see Garage48 helping young entrepreneurs embrace the long-term view,” said Rainer Sternfeld. The winner of Planet OS Data Challenge, Should I Go, enables travellers plan their trips according to weather predictions and the runner-up BirdRadar, maps bird migration routes and will save thousands of birds thanks to better planning of wind farms and military flights.
For the first time ever at Garage48, the TOP 3 teams can now claim for an exclusive mentoring session for 1 month. The TOP teams can choose themselves from a pool of 5 mentors, with whom they're going to have weekly mentoring session for the next 5 weeks. This will hopefully keep the teams moving forward on the right track and motivate them to keep on pushing themselves. Also, Garage48 is going to start a Garage48 Alumni Club for those who have survived this intense week-end event.
To make all the things happen at the hackathon, we need to thank many people who worked non-stop. First we need to thank the mentors who put lots of effort on helping the teams deliver the projects.
The hackathon’s mentor council consisted of Priit Salumaa (Co-Founder of Mooncascade and Garage48), Prof. Jaak Vilo (Head of Institute of Computer Science, University of Tartu), Kristjan Eljand (CEO at STACC), Annika Ljaš (Product Marketing Manager at Planet OS), Ilya Kuzovkin (PhD Student at University of Tartu), Dmytro Fishman (Junior Researcher at the University of Tartu, Researcher at Quretec OÜ), Anna Leontjeva (Senior data scientist at STACC), Irene Teinemaa (Data Scientist at STACC), Tauno Metsalu (Data Scientist at Kaya Consulting), Sander Kuusemets (IT Specialist at High Perfomance Computing Centre at University of Tartu), Andres Luhamaa (Data Integration & QA Engineer at PlanetOS), Veli-Johan Veromann (Designer and UX/UI guru), Andres Kütt (Architect at Estonian Information System's Authority), Maido Parv (UI/UX designer at Skype), Indrek Seppo (Data analyst at CentAR), Taavi Tammiste (Head of Data Science at Mooncascade), Mikhail Iljin (Lead Developer at FeelingStream) and Mark Fishel (Associate Professor at University of Tartu, Institute of Computer Science).
Special thanks also to our jury members (Mikk Lellsaar / Ministry of Economic Affairs &
Communications, Prof. Jaak Vilo / Tartu University, Dmytro Fishman / Tartu University, Anna Leontjeva / STACC, Ilya Kuzovkin / Tartu University, Priit Salumaa / Garage48, Mooncascade, Veli-Johan Veromann / Weekdone) who had the VERY difficult job of choosing the best from the best. The biggest thank you however goes to our amazing VOLUNTEERS (Sanita Lasmane, Maruta Roge, Anna Marin Mõttus, Sten-Oliver Salumaa, Gagandeep Singh, Maria Deriaga, Madli Kaljula, Fredi Arro, Kristi Vabamäe) that helped throughout the week-end. The organising team is forever grateful to work with such happy, hard-working and kind people.
But now let's go to the part that you all have been waiting for - the WINNERS.
Overall Winner
MARKUS helps companies to automatically verify the age of the customer.
Prize: Tickets to the SLUSH conference + direct access to Ajujaht TOP 30
1-st Runner-up
An app that helps the user identify the bird species from the sound recorded.
Prize: 4 people will go to Slush conference and other team members to Latitude59
2nd Runner-up
Open Tartu (for Smart Citizens)
Scrape metadata from document registry (got a working prototype); Visualise the flow of decisions and money; Engage citizens in discussing, voting etc.
Prize: All of them will go to Latitude59 conference + tickets to EscapeTartu
The Best Marketing Award
BeerBuddy
Beer Buddy is a Facebook Messenger chat bot that makes your evening beers more fun by providing you with company and chatting with you about movies, alcohol, etc!
Prize: beer from Õllenaut and cheese from Andre Farm + RedBull drinks
The Best Technical Solution
Linder
Prize: beer From Õllenaut and cheese from Andre Farm
The Best Visualisation
DataX
Automated visual analysis of data.
Prize: Tickets to ExitRoom
PlanetOS Challenge
Winner: Should I Go
We want to make a map which will suggest you the best places for your trip. You can just select what you want to do, for example skiing, surfing, hiking, and when you want to do it. Our website will tell you where will be the best weather conditions for your trip.
Prize: 1000€ cash prize
PlanetOS Challenge Runner-up: BirdRadar
Map bird migration routes.
The Favourite of the Audience
Cody
Interactive code learning platform for students.
Prize: Gift bag from Sparkcafe
And a HUGE shoutout from the rest of the KICK-ASS teams:
Locata
Locata turns location based data to valuable information for everyone.
TOOTLUS
X-ray your pension fund.
OfficeHealth
A tool that gathers,analyses and reports health data. The reports offer advice on how to improve microclimate and occupational health of a company (the buyer of the service).
XIoT
IoT Data Marketplace
Exctelligence
We are creating a intelligent web tool, where investors could make educated decisions by comparing taxes, GDP, labor cost etc.
Flipover
An online project management tool with a twist – using your time logs, margin data and usage of resources, we will predict the outcome of a project at any given time.
Network Planner
We are developing a web-based tool to help website owners and administrators identify the optimal locations for their web servers in order to achieve the fastest possible page loading times for their users.
HypeSilo
HypeSilo helps companies prioritize their social media messages from all sources. We do this by analyzing these messages and offering automatic replies.
F_Stop
It is the peer to peer web platform, where you can rent all the equipment from other local creatives.
Also you can share and rent your own gear to other local creatives and earn some extra money. Lets boost the sharing economy.
AND THE BIGGEST THANK YOU EVER GOES TO OUR SPONSORS, SUPPORTERS AND PARTNERS, WITHOUT WHOM WE WOULDN'T EXIST:
“Garage48 Open & Big Data 2016” took place in the framework of EU Structural Funds support scheme “Raising Public Awareness about the Information Society” and is funded by the European
Regional Development Fund.”