mLab and Hackathon[YAN] Yerevan 2011 Winners
mLab ECA in cooperation with Microsoft Innovation Center Armenia and Public Journalism Club have organized Hackathon[YAN] Yerevan contest which took place on 17-18 December 2011, lasting 24 hours. Hackathon [YAN] Yerevan 2011 was dedicated to solving the problems that Yerevan and city’s inhabitants deal with. More than 50 teams submitted projects, which hacked issues related to health, transportation, education, environment, problems of disabled people living in the city and tourism.
During the round-the-clock contest, 33 teams (over 150 people) worked to develop and publicly present their programs, applications, mobile solutions and web sites or their prototypes/demo versions to the panel of judges. Majority of the teams (20 teams) worked on different mobile applications, solutions for the city. The Yerevan Mayor visited the event and expressed the Municipality’s readiness to cooperate with the best teams and projects.
Seven projects received awards and monetary prizes. Mobile applications developed during Hackathon[YAN] were under facilitation and consultancy of mLab. Two mobile applications were awarded mLab ECA prizes: “Mapy” application to address Yerevan related information accessibility for city visitors and inhabitants by CYBER GATES team and “Annoisy” application, which is a rapid reporting system on “annoying noise”(car signals, construction, loud music, etc.) by Annoisy team.
In addition Grand Prix went to mobile solution presented by “Ognakan” team (translated as “assistant” from Armenian). The “Voice” project of this team allows people with hearing disabilities to communicate with others through a mobile application.
The winners of three Microsoft Innovation Center prizes have presented projects on: 1. Traffic regulation and monitoring, 2. Kinect-powered Yerevan info stand and 3. System of improved communication between drivers and police. The Traffic regulation project uses the city cameras to calculate the traffic, average speed, bandwidth, and transfers the data to an HTML 5 map. The system is storing the content in Windows Azure and is available for all mobile devices supporting HTML 5. The Municipality has already started working with some of the teams for implementation of their projects.
MLab ECA has worked and is still cooperating with all the teams who have mobile component in their project, assisting and facilitating their works directed towards new product development and promotion.
RA Minister of Economy, US Ambassador, Donor organizations, Entrepreneurs, IT Development Agencies and other honorable guests were present during the Winners announcement ceremony on 19th of December.
Considering the success of the event, organizers made the decision to continue the tradition of Hackathon and expand involving neighboring countries.
