In May 2017, Association Noosphere and the FAI, the World Air Sports Federation, will organize a hackathon for engineering enthusiasts and students from prominent Ukrainian universities.
The student hackathon will be a competitive brainstorming session on an FAI tесhnical assignment. The FAI is trying to improve its current scoring procedures at their air sport events and competitions. The hackathon assignment will be to develop a new way to track results for ballooning competitions, specifically measurement devices for balloon flight indicators.
At this stage 7 institutions have backed the initiative by hosting the hackathon, namely Dnipro National University, Kyiv National University, Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, Cherkasy State Technological University, Dnipro National University of Railway Transport, Lviv Polytechnic National University and Rivne National University of Water and Environmental Engineering.
The 48-hour hackathon will start simultaneously at each host university and will compete in two rounds. During the first 24-hour round, student teams will brainstorm and develop ideas for result tracking systems. During the second 24-hour round, they will fine-tune their ideas and prepare their final presentations. The international expert committee, guided by the FAI will evaluate each idea presented and award the winners by giving them support to implement their project. They will create a prototype and have the opportunity to test it live at the FAI Balloon Championship in September 2017.
The hackathon is made possible through the support of Noosphere Ventures, Association Noosphere’s stalwart, which was named the FAI’s Global Technical Partner on 2 February, 2017. The technical partnership agreement was signed by Noosphere Ventures Managing Partner Max Polyakov, FAI President Frits Brink and Secretary General Susanne Schödel. It outlines several areas they will be working together on. Given all the technical and science capacity of Noosphere Ventures, the partnership promises to start a technical revolution for FAI, creating new momentum for this 112-year-old, international institution.
Max Polyakov, who is also the founder of Association Noosphere, was excited about the agreement and commented, “Through our strategic partnership with FAI, we are eager to bring the innovation revolution to the world of technical sports. Our first steps will focus on providing modern tracking solutions to air sports. We believe that it takes teamwork to develop truly valuable products. Wikipedia, Uber, and Airbnb are only possible because of collaborative efforts and are now changing the landscape of the current digital economy. This is why Noosphere is creating special events with the FAI to engage with global communities of entrepreneurs and scientists.”
