Deloitte: 2nd Cyprus Open Data Hackathon

The 2^nd Cyprus Open Data Hackathon was held on the 15^th and 16^th of September 2018 with great success in Limassol at the premises of ARIS | A Really Inspiring Space (http://www.ariscy.com). The Hackathon attracted the interest of nine (9)teamsfocusing on the development of innovative applications with the re-use of Open Data made available through the National Open Data Portal data.gov.cy and other public sector portals.

The Cyprus Open Data Hackathon was co-organized by the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Centre of Deloitte and the Public Administration and Personnel Department (PAPD) of the Ministry of Finance in collaboration with Hack Cyprus, in order to showcase and encourage the reuse of public sector information that is made available as open data through the data.gov.cy portal.

During the two-day competition programmers, developers, analysts, students, researchers and professionals, presented interesting ideas retrieving different open data sets from the National Open Data Portal with a business interest in important sectors of the economy, such as tourism and services, while others have a particular social interest.In order to assist the teams participating in the competition to develop their applications, 13 mentors provided their feedback and support to the contestants based on their expertise. In addition, 10 executives with both technical expertise and experience from the business environment, the start-up ecosystem and technology formed the Evaluation Committee, who judged the teams.

The 2^nd Cyprus Open Data Hackathon ended with the selection of three (3) winning teams, which were awarded with monetary and other prizes. The first prize of the Hackathon was awarded to the team Prolepsys, which created a next generation tool for reporting wildfires. The second prize went to Null (with their Augmented Reality app called City View) and the third to the team The Extinguishers. The prize of the “Smart Cities Challenge”, sponsored by the Municipality of Ypsonas, was also awarded to Prolepsys.

The cash prizes were offered by the Bank of Cyprus (Partner in Innovation), while ARIS | A Really Inspiring Space, European University of Cyprus, CYTA and Proto.io offered prizes in kind or services. Sponsors of the event were also Exerte Partners as well as the companies KEAN, KEO, THE COPY SHOP, LAY’S, QUAKER and ZORBAS BAKERIES with their products and services. The organization of the 2^nd Cyprus Open Data Hackathon was supported by Impossible Works, the Centre for Entrepreneurship (C4E) of the University of Cyprus, the Open University of Cyprus, the Embassy of Israel in Cyprus, the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Cyprus, the Cyprus Agileand Innovation and Open Technologies Alliance (GFOSS).