Building a better Trinidad and Tobago and ways hackathons can benefit us

Building a better country will require thinkers, innovators, problem solvers, visionaries, and techies among others. We will be challenged to solve our biggest problems and tech can help. What is a hackathon? Hackathon is a combining of the words hacking and marathon. It is an event where persons including coders team together to create solutions using code and technology. Not to be confused with hacking where systems are broken into. We do need ethical hackers locally and it can be rewarding through bug bounty programs but that is for another blog post.

The first hackathon on record was the one organized by the OpenBSD operating system project. Hackathons did not become widespread until the mid 2000s when companies like Yahoo and Google began hosting them. It was a way to encourage innovation and creativity among their employees. In my days there were programming contests like the Informatics Olympiad which I have blogged about before.

Some past hackathons locally include Teleios codejam, iGovTT HackTT, Shell AI Hackathon, WIP Hackathon and Byte the π. We definitely need more hackathons locally. This is something the private sector and government can easily get involved with. Something for the Ministry of Digital Transformation and the Developers Hub.

Hackathons encourage problem solving. It pushes for outside the box thinking. It challenges us to come up with innovative ways to solve complex problems. It is a great way to foster collaboration and build relationships that will last beyond the hackathon. India has recognised the role hackathons can play in country development and they have the Smart India Hackathon. They want to build a smarter India and one of the outcomes listed on their website is collaboration : crowdsourcing intelligence for improving governance and quality of life. We can certainly learn from their experience.

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