AIOTI is announcing the launch of Web3 Hackathon

In the run-up to the AIOTI Signature Event on 10 October, AIOTI is organising its first hybrid (in-person and online) Web3 hackathon on 21/22 September in Brussels, at VUB, U-Residence, Blvd Géneral Jacques 271, 1050 Ixelles, with the following objectives:

• Educate potential stakeholders from key target markets (Industry, Media, Public Authorities, and Education) on the benefits of Web3 technology through peer learning and moderated interactions between AIOTI members and other participants.
• Enhance networking between participants
• Create opportunity for participants to build collaborative offerings that are adapted to the needs of key target markets (Industry, Media, Public Authorities, and Education)
• Catalyse creation of a catalogue of Web3 tools and services.

Content preparation of the hackathon

The Web3 hackathon consists of opportunities and challenges for participants to ‘hack’ around by using business and technical Web3 components.

To identify these challenges and opportunities, a series of hybrid (online and on premises) pre-event workshops will be carried out ahead of the hackathon. In each workshop, industry-specific problems would be identified by current users of Web3 technology, alongside with transversal (industry-independent) challenges.

All workshops will follow the same pattern:

• 2 hours workshop
• Up to 10 participants, for at least half currently working with Web3 technology in the target industry (Industry, Media, Public Authorities, and Education)
• Participants moderated by an experienced facilitator.
• During the workshops, the facilitator will help initiate an online collaborative tool with whiteboard to capture input from the participants and guide the workshop

Workshop outputs will include:

• Web3 opportunities and Challenges for the hackathon
• Brief report from the workshop that can be shared to promote the hackathon

Before the Hackathon: Hacking Guide

Hacking Guide is a document that provides participants with a comprehensive overview of the event. It offers both high-level guidance (how the hackathon is put together, the content – Challenges – of the event) and the detailed description of every major step in the event.

The Guide’s role is helping participants prepare for the Hackathon, as well as to enable them to work independently during the event.

The Guide will be distributed electronically (PDF) to the participants prior to the event, integrated in the online collaboration tool and made available during the event as well.

Hackathon Ideation Workshops (Day 1)

Two rounds of four simultaneous ideation workshops will take place at the start of the event:

• Industry
• Media
• Public Authorities
• Education
• Wild-cards (cross-industry)

Ideation Workshop Process

The ideation workshops will be co-hosted by an expert and a practitioner in the respective industry. At the start of the first part of the workshops they will present subjects (opportunities and challenges) identified during the pre-event workshops.

After a short introduction by the workshop’s facilitator, domain experts will present participants their challenges and opportunities:

• introduction to the context of each opportunity and the nature of the challenges
• Complexities of the context, such as regulatory or economic constraints
• History of earlier (successful or failed) attempts to deploy specific Web3 use-cases

Experts will answer questions from the participants and remain available throughout and between the workshops.

After presentation part, participants will be organised in groups and taken through a structured ideation exercise by the facilitator. Participants would be encouraged not only to think about how their own technologies could be applied to solve the challenges, but to also see what kind of collaborative Web3 solutions could be developed.

One idea of each of the groups will be shared with all other participants at the end of each ideation workshop. These ideas will be written up on Big Idea Posters.

First ideation workshop will last about 1 hour and 45 minutes; the second will last about 1 hour and 30 minutes as the participants will be more familiar with the methodology, and the same process will take less time.

Team Formation

After the ideation workshops, participants will be asked to form mixed teams around their favourite ideas (Big Ideas from two rounds of ideation). Facilitators will ensure that the teams are diverse, and that they are of manageable size (4-7 participants).

Draft event schedule

DAY 1

08:30 Registration

09:00 Opening Briefing

09:20 Ideation Workshops, 1st round

11:10 Coffee Break

11:30 Ideation Workshops, 2nd round

13:15 Lunch

14:00 Afternoon briefing

14:10 Idea Gallery and Team Formation

14:40 Team Work Kick-off: Hacking Time & Validating Solutions (expert meetings)

17:00 Closing Briefing

DAY 2

08:30 Welcome & Coffee

09:00 Welcome Briefing

09:10 Hacking Time & Validating Solutions (expert meetings)

12:30 Lunch

13:00 Hacking Time: Pitch Preparation, Pitch Review Sessions

15:30 Submitting Presentations

15:45 Pitching Round for peers and experts

16:45 Rapid fire presentations for peers and the Jury

17:00 Awards