The data4good Hackathon will happen on April 27th-28th - see the detailed schedule below.

Rapid advances in Artificial Intelligence and data processing technologies are having a deep impact on society. This has triggered a certain amount of media hype about the opportunities and risks behind this profound transformation. The data4good Hackathon aims to close the gap between buzz and knowledge, paving the path for NGOs, newbies, and practitioners to put AI’s promise to practice, and learn first-hand how to deal with both its advantages and its shortcomings.

In an intense, 2-day hackathon interdisciplinary teams of data scientists, developers and designers will work together with domain experts from NGOs and social enterprises to create new insight about their work, solve complex challenges and identify new social impact opportunities. This may be in form of statistical analyses and machine learning models, data visualizations or by linking existing data with new data sets – the teams have no boundaries on their creativity!

The hackathon is part of a broader framework of democratizing Artificial Intelligence [AI]. With the data4good Hackathon we aim to:

• bring data science and the power of AI to new communities and partners
• create a beginner-friendly environment to introduce new data scientists to practical problems
• allow experienced data scientists to broaden their scope and experiment with new domains
• develop new markets for data science and AI-services in sectors that stand to benefit a lot but have higher entry-barriers

Call to Action

Are you looking to use your skills, knowledge or interest in data for good? Then join us in our first data4good Hackathon in April and be a part of the change you want to see in the world of data!

We seek all data enthusiasts – aspiring data scientists or experienced data wizards, savvy solvers of business intelligence requests, machine learning pros, predictive analytics angels, data mining experts, computer vision idealists, UX maestros and ambitious developers with an interest in social causes …

Schedule:

Saturday, April 27:

09:00 Breakfast and open Help Desk

10:00 Opening

10:30 Project introduction by the Data Science Leads + 15min Q&A

11:15 Team-building

11:30 Hacking !!!

13:00 Lunch break

14:00 Hacking !!!

17:30 Review: Status report

Sunday, April 28:

09:00 Breakfast

10:00 Hacking !!!

13:00 Lunch break

14:00 Hacking !!!

15:30 Preparing Demo & Slides

17:00 Final presentations

18:00 End

Participating NGO´s

The following organizations will provide data and cases in the data4good Hackathon 2019:

GrünStattGrau, Hilfswerk International, Hilfswerk Österreich, CivesSolutions

Project Descriptions

GruenStattGrau

The non-profit portal GruenStattGrau is a knowledge-management platform focused on urban greening. With the consideration for climate change, water management and air pollution the competency center aims to promote the development of green rooftops, facades and urban farming.

The data4good Hackathon project will focus on a textual analysis of the relevant literature (magazines, websites, blogs, …), to understand the geographical distribution of urban greening projects, as well as the development of topics over time.

Hilfswerk International

Hilfswerk International is an Austrian non-profit that has been implementing emergency relief projects and sustainable development projects in different countries around the world since 1978. One example is the construction of mother houses and the equipment of health posts in Mozambique to effectively reduce maternal and child mortality.

The data4good Hackathon project will analyze a collection of articles to understand, on scale, which foundations and organizations are supporting what kind of projects in which regions around the world. This will enable a targeted approach to Hilfswerk International’s fundraising efforts.

Hilfswerk Österreich

Hilfswerk Österreich is one of Austria’s leading charities. Their mission is to provide support in overcoming health, family, or social challenges. They provide services all over Austria, ranging from care for the elderly, child care, to social living and supermarkets.

Within the framework of their 24-hour care services for persons with physical disabilities, Hilfswerk Österreich provide a matching service between patients and live-in care providers. These matchings require intense care and administrative effort; accordingly, early cancellations caused by unsuitable combinations are undesirable. The data4good Hackathon project will examine historical cases, in order to help improve patient to care-provider matching.

CivesSolutions

CivesSolutions is a social enterprise that aims to improve democracy and governance by enabling active citizen participation. They provide consulting, research, and educational services for effective Smart City implementations around the globe.

Bottom-up initiatives for innovation in smart cities need a platform that connects citizens with authorities. In conjunction with CivesSolutions, at the data4good Hackathon we will build a prototype that addresses one aspect of the development process of a digital citizen’s complaint system. This prototype can then be used for further developments of the actual platform in a build-measure-learn cycle.

Organised by the Vienna Data Science Group

data4good is an initiative of the Vienna Data Science Group [VDSG]. The VDSG is a nonprofit association promoting knowledge about data science. We connect passionate data scientists from various areas of research and industry, in Europe and all around the world. data4good brings NGOs and social enterprises to the same table with data scientists and developers, contributing to the big social challenges of our time – such as the Sustainable Development Goals formulated by the United Nations.

Want to find out more? Check out the page on practical examples.

You can also watch the video of our opening event, the Data Science Salon Volume 2 on Data and Impact on Society

Contact Details data4good: data4good@vdsg.at, or contact one of the organizers directly at christopher.kittel@vdsg.at, rania.wazir@vdsg.at

Header Image with friendly permission from DSSG Berlin

This event is sponsored by

contextflow