During the last month, I have been a mentor of the Latvian Open Data Hackathon and an idea generator for pupils, organized by the Latvian Open Technologies Association with the support of DATI Group, E-Klase, Latvijas Kultūras akadēmija / Latvian Academy of Culture, Vides aizsardzības un reģionālās attīstības ministrija (VARAM)/ Ministry of Environmental Protection and Regional Development of Republic of Latvia and others.

This year the main topic of the hackathon was cultural heritage! Within a month, 36 teams from 126 participants from all over Latvia developed their ideas and prototypes, 10 teams reached the final after a round of semi-final presentations of their solutions to us – the mentor team (of course, we worked with the assigned teams in previous weeks as well).  Here, we not only evaluated these ideas, but also provided them with yet another portion of feedback and suggestions for improving the idea or prototype for its further presentation in the final, where the jury will finally decide who the winner is.

Here I should note that as usually (I am a permament mentor of this hackathon) the participants surprised me very much both with the diversity of ideas and in very many times with their technical knowledge and skills (AI, crowdsourcing, gamification to name just a few) – just wow!

And last week it happened – we finally found out who are the winners – Kultūrkults as the best idea in the respective category (idea generator), and 417 Expectations Failed as the hackathon winner!

Congratulations to everyone on the successful efforts to promote the cultural and historical heritage! Also, congrats the whole society on having such a responsible and passionate youth to their culture and history!

Repeating what I already at the closing ceremony, I really want to believe that all the teams that participated in the hackathon will develop and implement their ideas regardless of the outcome of the hackathon – you are all winners for us! Keep going towards your goal!

Watch the closing ceremony (in Latvian) here.