#HackTravel Brno 2019 Highlights

22 Oct

We had an amazing time at HackTravel hackathon previous month in Brno. Thanks to all organizers, such as S.A.B. Aerospace, Kiwi.com, Copernicus EU and all other supporters!

We did some hacking with the Copernicus satellite data and we used it to find ideal travel destinations in relation to the amount of snow, water level or air pollution. For these ideal destinations, we found transportation via Kiwi.com Tequila API. It also has a working user interface and you can try it on radar.siesta.cloud.

Eventually, we won the Kiwi.com challenge with this project and we were advanced to the global round! 🎉

It was nice to receive all the prizes, meet interesting people and play around with the satellite data. But the most positive thing we reflect to is to see different teams, institutions, and corporations working all together on global problems like deforestation, solar energy, life quality, and other issues. We believe various problems can be solved by innovation and it was a great experience to see all the people working together on the prototyping of these solutions.

Moreover, we had a chance to take a quick interview with the main organizer S.A.B. Aerospace — Václav Havlíček 🛰

1. What inspired to you organize the Hackathon?

It’s actually quite simple — last March, ESA BIC Prague organised the Copernicus Hackathon as the main organiser and invited us to co-organise with them. After that, we decided we want to do it on our own and we did! Also, we did hire one of our employees after the first hackathon and we realized that this is a good way to get to know who can fit into our company etc. Also, we thought that having a hackathon is fun. That’s an important KPI as well — fun.

2. What do you think was the most interesting in hosting the HackTravel event?

Let me clarify this a bit — in June, I was at the afterparty of Women in Tech conference, which Kiwi.com and Czechitas organised. And I jump into Jan Bleha (community manager at Kiwi), whom I’ve already known from previous events. We did talk a bit and he said that he is throwing this international hackathon weekend with many participants and locations. But it was on the same weekend as we were planning our Copernicus Hackathon for! So I offered him that I will host the Brno HackTravel event as one of the categories in their Global Hackathon. So we had Copernicus Hackathon and HackTravel event merged into one event! Most interesting stuff? Probably the spectrum of participants — from coders to business people, the mix of backgrounds and experiences.

3. Will host any other events?

In November, there is Czech Space Week coming up, with SAB Aerospace as Platinum Partner — multiple events in both Prague and Brno. So yeah, there are some events coming this fall + we have one great idea for spring, but that is still a secret!