Reacting to a bleak report by World Competitiveness, which saw Australia fall to third last in global innovation and entrepreneurship rankings, technology trailblazers CloudTech Group, JR Academy and The Australian Blockchain Club are spearheading the nation's largest ever hackathon, 'HackFest: Hack the Planet.'
The objective of the hackathon is to provide an avenue for young coders, developers and early-stage companies to design solutions for real-world problems, employing the latest tools for building decentralised applications, smart contracts and other Web3 infrastructure.
Hosted at RMIT's Storey Hall on August 18 and 19, the event will bring together judges and mentors from some of Australia's leading universities and companies, including the University of Queensland, RMIT, Monash University, Deloitte, Accenture (NYSE:ACN), FileCoin, ReBlonde Communications and Cointelegraph.
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Largest prize pool ever
The primary objective of HackFest is to encourage participants to move beyond pitching ideas, focusing instead on transforming these concepts into minimum viable products (MVPs), harnessing the power of AI and Web3 technologies.
With the largest prize pool ever in Australia, participants will compete for a total prize pool of more than $50,000 in cash prizes, crypto-based incentives and other perks and benefits.
Most importantly, the hackathon presents potential access to venture capital for these young companies.
Cloudtech chief marketing officer Liam Bussell said. "The interest in competitive coding events, or hackathons, has grown significantly and if we focus that attention on ideas that have the potential to improve the planet or disrupt inefficient existing processes, we will incentivise new solutions to previously intractable problems.
"Great ideas often start as science fiction - private space travel, the internet, AI-powered health interventions. It only takes creativity and hard work to move these ideas off the page and into real life."
About the event
The event comprises two parts. The hackathon online project submissions opened on May 15, followed by a submission deadline on August 6.
Judging and code review will take place on August 7, 8 and 9, with finalists being announced on August 10.
The event will culminate in a two-day in-person hackathon at RMIT on August 18 and 19, with a final pitching session and an award ceremony.