Individuals and groups with eco-friendly web app ideas, submitted projects on the Eco Hack website several weeks prior to the event.13 groups were formed, and by 9am Saturday morning, the teams were ready: There are tough discussions, scribbling and coding. Observers, like me, were invited to join a team, asked questions and collaborate on building the technological tool and the presentation that the jury will hear later in the day.
The profile of participants was quite varied, there are of course programmers and entrepreneurs, but also representatives of NGOs, and some self-employed; many young and some senior citizens, students, activists for open data etc. Even the city of Montreal, who had agreed to release some free snippets of “big data” for the occasion, was part of the game.
Throughout the day, we’ve been asking a lot of questions about cities, community spirit and neighborhood life of citizens, division of property, urban food, waste reduction, resource scarcity etc…Everyone believes in their project, taking their cause seriously, and working with enthusiasm. If most of the teams worked between keyboards and pencils, some also brought soldering irons, green plants and other equipment to build prototypes!
Ultimately, twelve of the thirteen projects presented their ideas for the first time, and a company was created from this first edition of ÉcoHack. There is a general feeling and yearning for all this to really work! In contrast to several startup events where projects are ephemeral, here, the goal is to create viable solutions. And next year, where will these initiatives be? I can’t wait to see!
Congratulations to the écoHackMTL2014 winners!
– Participant Prizes: SharingKit http://bit.ly/sharingkit
– Green Startup Prize: SharingKit
– Sustainable Food Systems Prize: Urburb.http://bit.ly/urburb
– Evolution Prize: Share your city http://bit.ly/ptville OCPM
Now it’s your turn to vote for the Public Grand Prize: http://ecohackmtl.sparkboard.com/
Click. Vote. It’s easy!
