Timisoara 2017
We started on Friday, October 6th, with the Urban Talks Conference day, during which 18 speakers with diverse backgrounds from around the world talked about four main themes:
- Social Sector & Community
- Education
- Future Cities
- Technology & Innovation
You can watch the talks here.
The unique component of the event was the Innovation Hackathon, which generated the proper context for participants to generate IT solutions for local, national and global challenges. The two main tracks of the hackathon were The Future of Manufacturing (based on the blockchain technology) and The Future of Communities.
The Hackathon was spread over two full days (October 7th & 8th) and rewarded the best projects with prizes worth 10,000 Euros in cryptocurrency at the end.
Urban Talks: First edition
Event agenda:
| 9:00 to 9:30 9:30 to 9:45 |
Registration and welcoming Presenting Event Concept & Conference Themes |
First Theme – Social Sector & Community
| 9:45 to 10:00 | Simona Neumann – Welcoming speech |
| 10:00 to 10:25 | Chris Torch – Community engagement through culture |
| 10:30 to 10:45 | Mihaita Papara – The role of innovation in adaptive sports & social integration |
| 10:50 to 11:05 | Zuby Onwuta – How to turn personal problems into global solutions |
| 11:10 to 11:25 | Arpitha Petereu – Social innovation |
| 11:30 to 11:45 | Q & A Session |
| 11:45 to 12:15 | Coffee Break |
Second Theme – Education
| 12:30 to 12:45 | Mihai Lupu – Why creating educational ecosystems in small communities matters |
| 12:45 to 13:00 | Alex Glod – Empowering the citizens of the future |
| 13:00 to 13:15 | Monserrat Vega Gordillo – How to use Biotechnology to solve problems in education |
| 13:25 to 13:40 | Astrid Schrader – How to survive the Startup Frenzy |
| 13:45 to 14:05 | Q&A Session |
| 14:05 to 14:50 | Lunch Break |
Third Theme – Future Cities
| 15:00 to 15:15 | Colin Whitfield – Design our cities to build better humans |
| 15:15 to 15:30 | Andreea Iager – Urban regeneration through creative industries |
| 15:40 to 15:15 | Vlad Stanciu – Local eco-innovation for global impact |
| 16:00 to 16:15 | Ada Matei – Alternative Education in Future Cities Catapult |
| 16:15 to 16:30 | Q&A Session |
| 16:30 to 16:50 | Coffee Break |
Fourth Theme – Technology & Innovation
| 16:50 to 17:10 | Marion Neubronner – Why Google, SAP, Singtel and Perx Search Inside Themselves, and You Should Too |
| 17:15 to 17: 30 | Calin Brandabur – Technology |
| 17:30 to 17:45 | Bruce Chen – Be Original and Stay True to Yourself |
| 17:50 to 18:05 | Anton Golub – Blockchain, the future is here |
| 18:10 to 18:25 | Q&A Session |
| 18:25 to 18:40 | Coffee Break |
Closing Panel
| 18:45 to 19:20 | Round Table regarding Alternative Financing for Startups and Blockchain Technology |
| 19:20 to 19:40 | Q&A Session & Closing Keynote |
Innovation Hackathon: The Future of Community & Blockchain Technology
Winners
The Future of Community:
Captured 1.0 – a system that helps visualize and perform risk analysis on corruption levels in public acquisitions. The prototype that was built in 36 hours managed to gather data for an entire country during a 4-year time span, in 4 different, high-value national public acquisition markets.
The concept can be further developed into a visualizing and real-time risk analysis platform dealing with corruption risk within public acquisitions in 35 different countries. The project will have the chance of being presented in front of a United Nations Committee.
The other projects running in this category were:
- Hand2Hand – a user-friendly app designed for the management of necessary resources after a natural disaster
- No Fake News – an add-on that invites users to classify information sources according to their level of reliability
- ZeroCozi – an app that keeps live track of queues in different institutions, also allowing for a virtual ticket to be printed, informing the user of the estimated time he or she must be present in the queue
The Future of Sustainable Manufacturing using Blockchain:
All the 4 teams that participated in this category received prizes in crypto-currency, as the jury decided to pair up projects that are complementary and that could grow further together.
The first prize was therefore split between two projects (TrustChain and OpenRetail) that seek to simplify the foreign exchange market through more intelligent, more transparent and safer transactions in Blockchain. Both teams won $6000 worth of crypto-currency.
The second prize, consisting of about $1500 worth of crypto-currency for each team, was split between Disrupting the Supply Chain and GreenChain. The first project attempts to simplify 3D printing using Blockchain, while the second one tries to improve the knowledge as well as the responsibility regarding the life cycle of every product.