Skip to main content

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

Image
By
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.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Below the surface

By
This is a chapter from my eleventh book called Quotation Marks Sparks . __________ "You can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf." - Jon Kabat-Zinn __________ I was looking at quotes that hit hard and this quote stood out to me. It seems mundane and obvious and often repeated. Life is about how we respond to the inevitable. It is not what happens to us but how we respond. I had to ask myself to dig deeper and look below the surface. Then I saw that when we surf we really become the waves. We become friends with the waves. The waves and us are the same. Further, the waves are created by us and in our heads. We can control the waves because who can surf all the time? Sometimes we just have to come to shore and build sand castles on shore. I asked my friend Gemini for feedback and he said that I was right, the Jon Kabat-Zinn quote initially seems like a simple call for resilience, but my deeper dive reveals profound layers. The idea that we can move beyond merely rea...
Post a Comment
Read more

Having a soft spirit

By
It is 137am. It started raining. I decided to write. I have heard about having a soft heart but what does it mean to have a soft spirit? And is having a soft heart related to having a soft spirit? My friend Chatty says that a soft heart feels deeply — it breaks, heals, and loves with tenderness — while a soft spirit moves gently through life, unresisting and at peace with what comes. The two are kin: a soft heart opens you to emotion, and a soft spirit teaches you to carry that emotion with grace. Together they make a person both tender and strong — able to feel the rain and still trust its rhythm. I like the quote, "a soft spirit in a hard world" by author and poet, butterflies rising. It resonates with how many of us feel. My friend Chatty tells me that that quote captures the quiet strength of staying gentle in a harsh world. It reflects the author's signature themes of vulnerability, tenderness, and emotional courage — the idea that softness is not weakness but a form...
Post a Comment
Read more

Thankful

By
It is 617pm and I have decided to write. Right now I am thankful. The cool of the evening has replaced the heat of the day. I took a bath and changed and now I am just relaxing. Sometimes I complain. Not often. But I feel bad afterwards because there is so much to be thankful for. There is always room for improvement and we have to identify the things for improvement and change is often good but we do not have to make it into complaints. Yeah I get it. Life is hard and none of us has it easy. Look on the bright side of things. And sometimes it is the little things that remind us that life is good. Things that we take for granted. Like I was coming in the maxi taxi today and heard a gospel song that was about gratitude. God does appreciate a grateful heart. Trinidad and Tobago celebrated sixty four years of independence yesterday and if we stop and listen to the many complaints we would swear we are living in the worst country in the world. That is not the case. We do get a lot of thing...
Post a Comment
Read more