Hackathon for Good The Hague 4 edition was so much more than a weekend.

This year’s edition was double in size in terms of challenges, more international than ever and enriched by our expanded selection of experts and tooling sponsors. We are thrilled to see all the fruitful outcomes it has brought to the teams and challenge owners.

A Weekend, a month, a year …of working together for Good

For most of the outside world, a hackathon is merely a weekend of intense exploration, ideation and hacking. However we would like to give you a peek into the organizational efforts of our community and the dedication of the challenge owners, most of whom joined us already in the beginning of 2021.

Together with our partners - The Security Delta, The Hague Humanity Hub, The Hague Legal Tech Alliance, ImpactCity, Miles, RONT, Cittamap and more, we organized a series of events leading up to the hackathon weekend on the 26th-28th of November 2021.

These events included:

• “Challenges for Good” (1&2) aimed at helping challenge owners get feedback and support or data for their problem as well as providing opportunities for potential challenge owners and enablers to join our efforts towards the SDGs by applying technologies.
• “Talent for Good” which reached out to invite the invaluable group of experts for both mentor and jury positions.
• “Data for Good” which was an opportunity for data and tooling enablers to join our community and offer their services and support to the hackathon participants.

Challenges

We were extremely happy to be able to offer so much value and additional resources for each challenge in this fourth edition. All of our 8 challenge owners were guided through our signature WorldStartup Challenge definition sprint and data and resource collection steps. Check out all the challenges of The Hague 4 here.

Quote at the end of a Challenge definition sprint: “I have been having discussions on this topic for days and you and your process captured it all well in just under 2 hours. Thank you for the facilitation!" Bjorn Deutekom about the facilitation of Svitlana Khrystenko and Milena Ninova.

If you are an organization or business that has a challenge worth tackling for Good, send an email to Frank van Summeren (frank@hackathonforgood.org). We are eager to help you formulate it in the most clear way possible and get it out there in the hackers world.

Expert community

The Hague 4 gathered a total of 19 mentors and 34 judges for this edition. There were business, data and AI, innovation and field specific experts per topic.

The composition of the jury included a varied panel per challenge for the first pitching round and a second jury panel for the selection of the overall winning team. Browse through our experts here.

The Hackathon for Good organization team was so flattered by all the compliments on the onboarding process for experts this year. It is especially touching to hear feedback from some of our recurring mentors and jury members as well as our newly added talent.

Mentors and jury members follow their own part of the program including Mentor and Jury check-ins where they receive guidance and are able to exchange experience and materials.

Mentor quote: “It's a great inspiration for my daily work.”

To become part of our expert community, sign up to our newsletter and stay tuned for calls to action for our international editions (Yes, the Hackathon for Good is going beyond the borders of The Netherlands by organizing a second edition in India, and more countries coming soon…)

Newsletter:https://hackathonforgood.us6.list-manage.com/subscribe/post?u=c27ad98673f67d3f59fa47f09&id=4d8749da2b

The support program

The team at WorldStartup has developed a Hackathon for Good specific support program expanding over the month before the 48h hack weekend. The program is a collection of methods, tools and tips to bring the teams to work together and achieve more within the limited time frame. Our experience with both leading and participating in many innovation events, has helped us narrow down the best options to tackle working within a new team or accelerating your ideation and development when working with well-known teammates.

Curious to know more about the content of The Hague 4 support program? Check this out. However, we are planning on making it even better in 2022 based on all the feedback we received from both participants and partners.

Participant quotes: “It is a great experience for anyone interested in taking part in challenges of impact. Good opportunity to build skills, learn and network.”

“Energetic team, good organization and interesting content”

“Thanks, overall a really great experience!”

“We loved it! Thank you so much for hosting us - it was an unbelievable weekend. Inspirational and an educational rollercoaster altogether!”

“I love to give back and would participate again” - so grateful to hear that 9 out of 10 from our participants are likely to join again and would recommend the hackathon to their peers.

We are very thankful for the involvement and commitment of the challenge owners during the promotion of the topics and the 1-on-1 consultations with the teams. As well as the proactivity by some of the mentors and tools sponsors. Especially ESRI and Space4Good representatives from Mothership Missions who also offered our first ever Hackathon for Good Bonus Prizes.

!! Listen here to a podcast with one of the challenge owners Deborah Allen Rogers from Find Out Why on the challenge owner's experience from the hackathon program and the importance of the deep fake problems.

Hack weekend

Over the 48h hack period 100+ registered participants tackled our 8 challenges. It all started at our Kick off event on Friday 26th of November live from the studio of Holland Park Media at The Hague Tech. Yet only 65 participants made it to the Pitch event on Sunday 28th ready to present an exciting idea for Good. The hack period was supported by our custom-designed Flow platform by Miles and the fun interactive online environment of our sponsor Mibo.

For more information on the community and the vision of the city of The Hague, check out our press release for this edition.

All winners

Overall winner for The Hague 4 was the New designers team with their “TrustHousing” solution tackling the Combating horizontal fraud challenge. They started working closely with the Public Prosecutor and the Ministry of Justice & Security in The Netherlands to set up a prototype in 2022.

We congratulate the winning team "New designers" with their “TrustHousing” solution!

All challenge owners are exploring possibilities to continue with follow up projects with the winning teams. The hackathon organization will gladly keep you informed via our newsletter about their progress. If you are interested in the outcomes of a specific challenge, stay tuned for our aftermovie or reach out to Milena Ninova (milena@worldstartup.co).

Winners per challenge:

Blockchain against misinformation - Team What the Hack

Food waste - Team Nuns of JADS

Water & Circular greenhouse economy - Team Turtles

Drone flight control - Team Individuals (combined by our team manager)

Deepfake alert - Team The Figma Frikandels

Combating horizontal fraud - Team New Designers

Remote sensing for water salinity monitoring - Team Salinity Trackers AI

Urban flood mitigation - Team Fail Fast Break Fast

Bonus prize winners:

ESRI cash prizes & services voucher - Team Turtles

Mothership Missions workshop by Space4Good - Team SalinityTrackers AI

Congratulations and a big thank you to everyone who participated and contributed to these amazing outcomes!

Hackathon for Good Vision 2022 & The Hague 5

The Hague Tech and WorldStartup, together with our partners, are already looking forward to an even stronger and more inspiring 2022.

The collected learnings will hopefully help us reach an even bigger impact with our The Hague 5 edition.

The Hackathon for Good methodology is available for partners internationally who would like to host their own hackathon program. Get more information and apply at info@hackathonforgood.org.

The first event from the 2022 year plan will be on the 20th of January 2022 in a hybrid format.

We welcome current and potential new challenge owners and enablers to join our Kick off “for Good” activities and event plan. Register here for more information or share it within your network.

We expect upcoming editions to spread across continents.

Join us in co-creating and collaborating with other organizations and communities for Good!

Impressions from the organization team

Carefully studying all the valuable feedback from our challenge owners, teams, jury and mentor experts. We are eager to work on some pointers for improvement for the editions to come.

You can expect an improved Support program, a next level Flow platform and better engagement with the mentors.

If you participated in this The Hague 4 edition but still didn’t get to share your experience with us, please drop us your thoughts:

Evaluation form for PARTICIPANTS

Evaluation form for MENTORS

Evaluation form for JURY MEMBERS

Impressions from our community

Challenge owners quotes:

“How much is it worth the hassle (to host a challenge as a problem owner”? It is actually not a hassle. The way they (HfG) work with us is extremely supportive so they keep us on track…They are such a solid team at the Hackathon for Good“ “It is worth it because we are were alongside challenge owners from the Ministry of Defence, Ministry of Justice and we are not institutional…” Deborah Allen Rogers from startup Find Out Why

“Solid project management and amazing results”

“Participating in the Hackathon has been a fruitful and very enjoyable experience and I like to thank you and the rest of the team for your help and support during preparation and the final event.We will also consider participating in one of the next Hackathons”

Teams quotes:

“It is a great experience for anyone interested in taking part in challenges of impact. Good opportunity to build skills, learn and network.”

“Challenges have been interesting. Hackathon is well structured.”

“Was a lot of fun and well organised”

“We loved it! Thank you so much for hosting us - it was an unbelievable weekend. Inspirational and an educational rollercoaster altogether!”

Mentor quotes:

“It's great inspiration for my daily work”

“Do the mentor matchmaking a bit more proactively instead of counting on serendipity.”

Jury quotes:

“I think it is a great concept so I would be happy to participate again.”

“I like how the Hackathon is growing and my expectations of the next edition are quite high.”