Junction is Europe’s leading hackathon and information technologies gathering point. Developers, designers, and entrepreneurs from across the world convened in Helsinki, Finland, for this 3-day conference November 25-27th, 2016. Acknowledging the flourishing startup environment in the Nordics, students from around the globe converged in the snow and slush of this northern capital to exchange ideas, network, and present their projects.
Ani Khachatryan, a GBSB Global Business School in Barcelona student as well as GBSB Academics Advisor, was a member of a three-person team at the assembly. Comprised of two other students from the University of Tartu in Estonia, each member had a specific role to play. With an extensive professional background in commercial sales in the information technology industry and experience in project management, Ani was the ideal candidate to present the project, as well as give her estimate on the profitability of the initiative to a very entrepreneurial-minded audience.
The other two students, currently participating in exchange programs in Belgium and Spain, covered the technological development and design of the project. The main theme their team would tackle would be based on the future mobility of smart cities and the role technology would play. This overarching idea looks at cities and how they will be managed in 50 years, the infrastructure, public works, and political functionality.
Other projects, only to name a few were: Intelligent Buildings: Solar Revolution in Apartment Buildings, Ecommerce & Retail: Fashion as a Service, and Fintech: What the fax is going on? The beauty of Junction is that it creates an open platform to be heard, to be seen, to create, to be felt and to be experienced. Teams were able to exchange feedback with their peers and had access to various resources, materials, and hardware enabling participants in constructing demos. Amazon, Bloomberg, and General Electric representatives were also in attendance offering their insight.
Only the 2nd Annual Junction event, there is no doubt there will be a third. The numbers reported for Junction 2015 were that 559 hackers attended from over 30 countries. They were allowed to hack on 8 different tracks with 36 different API’s for a total of 26 different prize categories and a grand prize of €20,000. “Junction was built to inspire and foster a community of creators and give them a hackathon experience like no other.” An adrenaline filled, dynamic three days where having fun was the main objective and building pretty cool shit was an added bonus.
All images are from HackJunction website.
To learn more about Junction, visit their website https://hackjunction.com/