Digital Nomads Hackathon – Refugee Month

We invite all developers, designers, entrepreneurs and social innovators to join the first edition of the Digital Nomads Hackathon. Our first event is dedicated to one group of contemporary nomads: refugees.

In order to allow those who don’t have an ID card to sign up for a bank account – could we maybe use blockchain technology? Or in order to give employment to those who don’t have access to the labor market – could we train them to deliver human-in-the-loop services for the training of machine learning?

The challenges will be formulated at a design thinking workshop led by Innovation Starter Box with the participation of NGO representatives, social innovators and agencies dealing with the refugee crisis. They will be communicated to the hackathon participants one day ahead of the competition.

During two days, participants will be divided into teams that will have to create a refugee-tech solution to one of three challenges that refugees face.

Innovation Starter Box’s founder Leona Aslanova is one of the best design thinking experts in Bulgaria. She will lead a design thinking workshop with representatives of the NGO sector and refugees, presenting the main principles of the methodology and help the participants define the three main challenges that refugees face:

• Step 1: Empathize
• Step 2: Define, of the Design thinking process, and will work on creating personas that represent types of refugees and their problems.
• Other topics include the Point Of View and How Might We challenge definitions.

The conclusions that the group reaches will be presented at the Digital Nomads Hackathon at which participants will have to create innovative tech-based solutions to the three challenges.

10:00 – Participant registration

10:30 – Event opening and introduction to the three challenges that teams will work on

11:00 – Quick brainstorming and team formation

11:30 – Start of the hackathon

13:30 – Lunch

14:00 – Mentorship sessions

Participants will be able to stay at A Hub during the night. Food and drinks will be provided

10:00 – Introduction to day 2 of the hackathon

13:30 – Lunch

14:00 – Pitch training, led by Boris Hristov, 356labs

15:00 – Pitch preparation

16:30 – Pitches in front of the jury

18:30 – Jury deliberation and awards

Angel Georgiev, SoftUni
Belizar Marinov, ABLE, Eleven
Iva Lazarova, UNHCR
Eleonora Carnasa, Service Design Network Bulgaria
Alaa Alturkmany: Telus, Syrian refugee
Silsila Mahboub: Caritas, Afghan refugee