Akure Joins Other Cities Across the World for the 2018 NASA Space Apps Challenge
Akure would join a host of other cities across the world who would be participating in 2018 NASA Space Apps challenge as the event would hold from the 19th to the 21st of October at Curators Hub, Akure/Ilesha express way.
Space Apps is an international hackathon that occurs over 48 hours in cities around the world involving coders, scientists, designers, storytellers, makers, builders, technologists and everyone enthusiastic about addressing challenges we face on Earth and in space.
It promises to be an exciting and collaborative scientific exploration pairing NASA’s data with problem solvers exploration across the globe. It would also be an opportunity to connect people in Akure and Ondo State in general with broader high-tech ideas, platforms, tools and players towards building home-grown innovations through community-led collaboration.
The Lead Organiser for Akure, Uwede Evi explained that the hackathon would be an opportunity to learn how to leverage space technologies to achieve our sustainable development goals. “…We are doing a lot of tech but our solutions have been limited to hard and software, space technologies hold so many potentials…hence the next step is to build our knowledge towards creating tailor-made solutions”, she said.
Participants would work together to solve difficult earth and space challenges with a focus on localizing cutting-edge technologies to foster bottom-up innovation in the community with access to NASA’s vast Open Data platform.
Participation is open to people of all ages, hence students from tertiary institutions around the state, secondary school students and interested community can join in. However, in accordance with NASA rules, participants under the age of 13 should be registered and accompanied by a parent or legal guardian. Two entries from Akure would be nominated to advance to Global Judging by the NASA team.
If you need some inspiration, you can check out how to develop a winning space apps solution.
Meanwhile, Ideal Space Technologies, an incubator based in Lagos would be incubating winning ideas that could be turned into startups from the Hackathon.
Last year’s hackathon was the largest yet, with 187 events and more than 25,000 people participating across six continents, however, over 200 events have been scheduled for this year in different cities across the world.
