The Silberrad Student centre was buzzing with excitement for the Social Storm- 24 hour hackathon. A stimulating competition where contestants were paired with other students from around the world to solve three questions in relation to helping the world. The hackathon started at 2pm and continued to the following day, deadlines were at 12pm with results being released after 2pm.

Over 200 students participated from 14 universities, 11 of which were from the University of Essex. Each team had roughly 8 to 9 members and were allocated through a personality test, which they had to take prior to the event. They were given multiple ways to contact each other such as WhatsApp and Skype. These challenges were asking to apply business concepts to the real world, they were asked to have a 250-word foundation statement, a video and a summary, any extras was the group’s decision in order to stand out.

These questions were based on renewable energy, gender equality and access to internet. They encouraged people to be entrepreneurial, innovative and sustainable on their ideas.

The first group named themselves “Internerdz” with 5 members from University of Essex; they worked alongside Glasgow and Huddersfield University.  Once their team was allocated, their team struggled to communicate with each other due to internet problems, once finding their source of communication; they were quick to decide which challenge they wanted to take. With most of the members from University of Essex studying computer science or related, they had decide to provide an answer to getting access to internet in poorer regions in Africa.

They had decided to put a mesh of ‘super nodes’ in one place, which means that it will wirelessly beam Internet to places that lack access. Each place will have a super node, which is put into place, and ultimately these super nodes will connect with one another, sending data along with it.

Their group finished at 11:10am, with some people having the chance to go home and freshen up. They were relatively relaxed compare to other groups and their only problem was the struggle to communicate at the beginning. Their group comprised of Kurt, Joe, Enyinna, Andrew and Gloria.

The second group named themselves “Female Futures” with 3 members from University of Essex; they worked alongside Loughborough and a university from Belgium. With much struggle, they decided on women empowerment. Their idea focused on two groups, under 16’s and over 16’s. The idea of the business was to have a trailer which rotates around a certain developing country. When the trailer reaches a certain location, it works in two ways: for the under 16’s their trailer will be used as an ‘education hub’ where mobile teaching would take place.

This hub would include textbooks, teachers and tablets where they can learn basic  English and maths, the tablets will have pre-installed educational apps the children can continue use this until they reach the age of 16. For the over 16’s this hub will be used to learn business ideas and practical skills. They use the hub to learn how to make accessories, such as bags, from recycled material. The aim of the hub is to teach over 16’s basic making skills so they can progress to form a group and start a business from the accessories that they make. They would be taught through the videos made on the tablets. As the hub rotates around the country it can also be used to sell the products that they have designed.

 They will take 5% profit while the rest goes to the tailor. Alternative ways to selling the accessories are through mobile apps and other forms of social media. All profits made from the organisation will be used to improve the educational products. This process goes on for six months. The team was unsuccessful as the team struggled to co-operate with each other in regards to the actual product resulting in their disqualification. “Female Futures” comprised Chantelle, Obi & Achraf.

The third team selected the team name “Luminous”, their team included Emeka, Davide and Eduardo.  The team was made up of a University of Essex student, another from Loughborough and a Belgian university. They chose the question on renewable energy. They created a website with vast amounts of renewable energy information which can be accessed for a fee. This was aimed at small, medium and large business enterprises. They completed their challenge at 11:02am.

All in all, the hackathon was a great experience where all three teams learnt a range of employability skills such as team work, innovation and problem solving. It was unfortunate that no teams from Essex won, but this will motivate others to create more ideas for next year’ competition.