The BIG day is finally here! Hooray for Bahrain’s thriving ICT sector as Batelco, with the help of the Kingdom’s public and private sectors, launches the maiden edition of the Batelco Hackathon today, on Sep 5, 2018.
Unless you have been living under a rock for the past several months, you probably already know that Batelco, the Kingdom’s leading telecom network, plans on turning the Batelco Hackathon into a mega event in its own right. And rest assured, the event is not just about optics. It aims to help improve certain aspects of our lives (including, of course, our day-to-day digital interactions) with the help of technology and some of the brightest mind the region has to offer.
On the top of the agenda is one ambitious initiative which, if turned into action on the ground, could see Batelco’s remote sites transforming into smart cities. The telecom giant explains the objective in its announcement for would-be participants:
“Create a solution on how to convert Batelco remote sites to smart sites. How can we proactively detect faults in remote sites, for example, power systems, air conditioning temperature, humidity, water leak, generator issues and intruder detection? So the maintenance efforts can be focused on those sites.”
To be held at the Brinc Batelco IoT Hub, the first edition of Batelco Hackathon is scheduled to kick off at 08:30 on Sep 5. The events on day-1 will include a mentorship session for tech and innovation-driven employees that have their eyes set at becoming entrepreneurs and operating startups, as well as “The Perfect Pitch” workshop by Brinc.
“By the end of Day 1, teams should have come up with a business idea (product or service), have identified their target internal department/end user and researched competitors in this space. They should be able to describe what the product/service does, and its main features, to demonstrate how it solves the problem,” reads Batelco’s notification briefing participants what to expect on day-1.
Among the principal attractions on day-2 will be the pitching competition where the participating teams will share their innovations and business ideas in front of experts and the audience. The winner will get a chance to walk away with 2,000 BD, in addition to the opportunity of enrolling in the Brinc Accelerator Program on a full-time or part-time basis.
