On November 26, the Youth Hackathon on creating startups for smart cities ended. Beltelecom acted as the official partner of the event and prepared special prizes for the finalists.
More than a hundred students from six Belarusian and one Russian universities developed innovative solutions for the national project. The startups covered a wide range of areas: urban infrastructure, transport, logistics, big data and artificial intelligence, green economy, inclusive environment and tourism development.
Welcoming the Hackathon participants, Deputy Minister of Communications and Informatization Anna Ryabova emphasized the importance of attracting young people to such an interesting and promising concept as a smart city:
"The number of participants shows that young people would like to live in smart cities. Who else but students can come up with new digital services!"
Vasily Dubrovsky, the research project manager at the Belarusian State Academy of Telecommunications, noted that the creation of smart sustainable cities with a high standard and quality of life is one of the priorities of Belarus's digital development. In his opinion: "The main goal of the hackathon is to involve talented young people with creative ideas in the promising topic of smart cities and provide them with the opportunity to implement their startups."
The Hackathon program started on October 8 and included online and offline trainings, lectures, personal meetings and consultations with mentors. During this time, the teams learned to generate ideas, build business models, create presentations of their projects and much more.
After a thorough selection, 43 participants from 11 teams reached the final. On November 26, the finalists defended their projects.
The jury included the representatives of the Ministry of Communications, the International Telecommunication Union, the High Tech Park, as well as leading telecommunications operators and IT companies of Belarus, including Beltelecom, A1, SvyazInvest, beCloud, etc. Alexander Bondarenko, Deputy Head of the Information Technology Department, was the member of the jury from our company.
The experts identified the three best ideas for the smart city and the winners of a special nomination. The leaders of the Hackathon became projects of the SafeWay (Belarusian State Pedagogical University named after Maxim Tank), SearcHelper (Belarusian National Technical University) and SmartBins (Belarusian National Technical University) projects.
SafeWay is a map app for children with autism. SafeWay is equipped with a voice assistant and allows you to safely plan routes, set reminders, using photos for visualization. The SafeWay team received special prizes from Beltelecom! Alexander Bondarenko, Deputy Head of the Information Technology Department of our company presented the awards to the team. The SearcHelper project is a personal digital assistant that helps find and analyze information from various sources. SmartBins - an innovative system for monitoring the fullness of waste containers. Sensors signal the need for cleaning, that optimizes the work of utility services and improves the quality of the urban environment.
Hackathon on creating startups for "smart cities" is a national project organized by the International Telecommunication Union together with the Belarusian State Academy of Telecommunications with the support of the Ministry of Communications and Informatization of the Republic of Belarus.
