ChangeMakers‘ON hackathon is on its halfway: the first ideas were presented
by Ieva Tilindyte, ChangeMakers’ON
In May 4th business experts and start-ups were gathering to KTU Santaka Valley, where a social innovations hackathon by ChangeMakers’ON began. Participants are determined to work hard all weekend, they already have presented their ideas and gathered teams for common goal — during 2 days with a help of experts, develop a fully functional products. How will they work this out, we will see on Sunday.
Update : results here.
All the experts, guests, participants from all over the Europe were welcomed by event moderator Leonardas Pobedonoscevas: “We are happy that change is happening in Lithuania and a lot of experts came to support it from foreign countries. I believe, that here today are people, who respect their country and go in the right direction in solving rising problems”.
“It’s not a coincidence, that ChangeMakers’ON hackathon is happening for the second time here in KTU Santaka Valley, because one of our highest priorities is to create a favorable ecosystem for change makers and their innovations”, — supported the idea of an event and also gave a welcoming speech KTU rector ad interim Jurgita Šiugždinienė.
And indeed — on Friday evening gathered people, who are not ignorant for community social problems and believe that they can overcome them. All you need is an idea, in which you believe, a team, ready to do all their best and a big support from mentors. As we already made sure of that, this success formula will be adapted during hackathon — participants already presented their ideas, which will become a real social innovations in a short time. But we miss some part in this formula — technological innovations, which are very important in ideas becoming real.
During the discussion “Social innovations vs. technological innovations” about the importance of the combination of social and technological innovations, Gytis Morkūnas (Enterprise Lithuania), Jurgita Ribinskaitė-Glatzer (Reach 4 Change), José Santos Fonseca (Roche), Cedrik Charpenet (Ötzibrew), George Lambrianides (Pitch Data), Tiago Nascimento (Portuguese Belgium Luxembourg chamber of commerce) shared their visions.
“When we look into today’s technology, we see that they slowly replace human resources, but in order to make positive social changes, we need human contributions. So how to find a perfect balance between these two fields?”– asked for discussion participants a ChangeMakers‘ON initiator and discussion moderator Simona Simulyte.
Yes, technological revolution is coming undeniably. But discussion participants shared their thoughts, that in impact business robots will never be able to replace human creativity and intelligence.
“In fact, technologies can help to develop social innovations, providing them resources in need. For example, Facebook or other platforms, people can find each other, to fasten their creative process, in that way contributing to both social and technological innovations”,- shared his thoughts one of the experts George Lambrianides.
ChangeMakers‘ON participants also contribute to that.
Today, in the middle of their work, between ideas we can find interactive applications and platforms, for the purpose to help disabled people to intergrate into community, to gather mothers’ community, to contribute to evironment fostering. How will they evolve, you will know very soon!
ChangeMakers’ON is supported by “Barclays”. Social innovations program is implemented by Všį “Europos socialinis verslumo ir inovatyvių studijų institutas”, Kaunas University of Technology and Enterprise Lithuania. Patron of an event is Parlament member Gintarė Skaistė. Media partner “Kas Vyksta Kaune”.
Do you wish to know more about ChangeMakers’ON programs? — learn more here.
Have any questions? Do you want to participate? Contact us! https://www.facebook.com/ChangeMakersON/
Translated to English by Ugne Papievyte, ChangeMakers’ON
