The Award-Winning Ideas at #BG10xEU Hackathon
On May 12 -13, 2017, the #BG10xEU Hackathon took place in Sofia Tech Park on the occasion of the 10-year anniversary of Bulgaria’s membership in the EU. The event was initiated by the Representation of the European Commission in Bulgaria and Sofia Municipality; and Sofia Development Association, Software University, Webit Foundation, UPNETIX and the British Council in Bulgaria formed the core of the organizing team.
The Hackathon lasted 24 hours with 49 registered teams counting more than 350 participants interested in IT, programming, design, multimedia and marketing. Of all the starting teams, 34 managed to develop a minimum viable product and presented demo versions or prototypes of their solutions to the jury. Eight teams made it to the final and presented their ideas to the jury and the public.
The first prize in #BG10xEU Hackathon – 10,000 lv. and a voucher for presentation at Webit 2018 – was won by team Prizma for a prototype of an application for direct translation of camera-captured text to sign language with the possibility of recognition and translation of different languages. Because sign languages are different in different countries, contestants have provided the possibility of translating text from one language to a different sign language.
The second prize – 5,000 lv., provided by the Sofia City Council, was awarded to the team of the startup BrainHUB lab for the development of an application for real-time speech translation, including an educational platform for the learning of the sign language. The demo of the application called “Velar” showed successful visualization and recognition of basic gestures. The contestants also presented a wrist bracelet prototype, capable of solving this problem.
The third prize in #BG10xEU Hackathon – 3,000 lv., provided by the Sofia City Council, was awarded to one of the youngest teams – Dzham vrata – vrata dzham for an Internet platform for sharing problems in the urban environment in Sofia and opportunities for solving them both by the municipality and the citizens.
Sofia City’s Special Prize “Green Sofia” of 5,000 lv. was awarded to the 1Tree team for an augmented-reality (AR) game for web and mobile in which users can plant and take care of virtual trees at the place of trees that are actually missing from the streets of Sofia. The objective is to raise awareness about places where once have been or should be trees, but they are not planted yet. The project involves the creation of an open database with these places’ geo-locations which would assist the work of the institutions.
Telelink Group’s special prize of 10,000 lv. went to GaidAri team. With the capabilities of augmented reality, their application GuideAR aims at reviving the millennial history of the capital and the country via experience and interaction with cultural and historical treasures. In addition to creating the mobile application, GuideAR aims to initiate the setup of a digital archive of models and replicas of landmarks. GuideAR also received the special prize in #BG10xEU Hackathon, provided by MEP Eva Paunova –Maydell – a trip to Brussels and participation in the European Code Week. The award was presented by Mr Ognian Zlatev, Head of the Representation of the European Commission in Bulgaria.
