According to the host of the awards ceremony and CEO of Challengerocket Tomasz Florczak, hackathon is a meeting of programmers, engineers, fans of new technologies, whose task is to come up with innovative solutions in a very short time. 16 teams participating in Smart City Hackathon had only 24 hours to prepare.

Florczak announced that first place, the title of the Smart City Hackathon winner and a PLN 10,000 prize was awarded to the five-member team Blast Hack of the employees of Gdansk software company, Blast Lab. Their idea is to "teach a neural network - using artificial intelligence - to recognize emotion in the text". "Thanks to this, for example, city councils will be able to collect opinions about planned projects from any online source, check their emotional content and collect more data on residents` opinions" - he said. The system also allows to perform statistics and analyses of moods changing over time. After receiving the prize, the winners admitted that the award "can motivate them to continue working on the idea". They assured that the implementation of the idea took 24 hours. "And still had time to take a nap" - they added.

Second place and a PLN 5,000 prize went to the three-person team Trash Away. According to one of the authors, they have created a system that allows for "intelligent collection" of data on the storage and transport of waste from the city. The authors: a researcher, a university student and a high school student say that the system facilitates regular collection of waste. It prevents the overfilling of containers and allows to optimise the routes of garbage trucks. The winners said that they would spend the money on "personal development".

Third place and a PLN 3,000 prize went to the two-person team Sencity. The team prepared the concept of a system that uses cameras to automatically monitor the condition of roads and road signs. After receiving the prize, the authors declared "speeding up the work on the idea".

Florczak noted during the ceremony that the winner of the competition "will be the team that will now develop their idea". Audience award in the amount of PLN 2 thousand will be granted as a result of open vote that continues until July 4. You can vote through the smartcity.challengerocket.com platform. The results of the vote will be announced on July 5.

About 500 speakers took part in the Vision for Development Forum. According to the organizers (Fundacja Vizja Rozwoju established to support and promote innovation in the Polish economy), it was the largest economic event in northern Poland. The Polish Press Agency was one of the media partners of the event. (PAP)

author: Bożena Leszczyńska

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