OpenHack Coding for Humanity Brings Bright Minds Together in Gothenburg

Last weekend, Sigma Technology enjoyed many enthusiastic and inspired people in our office. Those people gathered to take part in OpenHack, an Open Source hackathon organized on behalf of Engineers without Borders Sweden (EWB). The OpenHack participants had only 48 hours to create solutions to problems within humanitarian and development aid. This year’s event focused on JobTech.

Among the challenges addressed at the event were efficient job matching without CVs, connecting people looking for housing or jobs and employers, easing the everyday life of parents of kids with special needs, and more. The teams developed solutions to face these challenges and presented their solutions to a jury consisting of representatives from OpenHack, Arbetsförmedlingen, Chalmers Ventures, and Sigma Technology. The factors for evaluation included innovation, complexity, potential, and quality of the contributions and ideas.

Credit: OpenHack

We saw impressive solutions developed in a very short time. Team Pinguin took home three consecutive awards for "Best Technical Solution," "People's Choice," and Arbetsförmedlingen's VIP invitation to present their solution at the JobTech Forum in Stockholm!

Jury highly praised the solution this team created: "Using existing data and complex calculations to visualize and display dependences of housing and employment, this solution showed proof of technical depth and user-friendliness!"

Credit: OpenHack

Other teams also presented brilliant solutions and got their part of appreciation. The award for best "Social & Humanitarian Impact" went to Team Crowd Path, team AJS-Cream won the award for "Best Pitch," and team Meeseeks got the award for "Best Experience for Public Service.”

Robert Åberg, Head of Digital Services at Sigma Technology Solutions, said:

“OpenHack was truly an unforgettable experience for us – hosting so many bright minds that care about humanity in our office felt fantastic! We work a lot to contribute to sustainable future through engagement in CSR and educational activities in Sweden, China, Ukraine, and South Africa.OpenHack does the same by uniting software engineers to solve humanitarian problems. We are sure that OpenHack is bound to be successful and make the world a better place to live by their initiatives.”