Hack for Gävle – citizen-driven innovation at its best

Hackathons are a new platform for citizen-driven innovation – where public, private and academic sector come together to interact and collaborate with citizens to create a Sweden for tomorrow.

In 15-16´th of february Hack for Gävle was held at Clarion Winn City Conference in Gävle with over 50 participants from all over the world. The 24-hour hackathon was a government mission raised to increase the awareness and use of open data and focused on the theme “How can data be used in an innovative way to create smart cities?”

– Hack for Gävle is a great way to challenge yourself and your creativity, but also an excellent opportunity to meet new people and make connections outside of your usual professional circle, says Henrik Dahl, CEO of FPX. The idea for this event was to engage citizens who have ideas for today’s and tomorrow’s society. It was a very interesting event and the outcome was very rich.

From Saturday night to Sunday night the participants worked on four different challenges: “Schools of tomorrow”, “A better city for elders”, “Be a smart neighbor” and “A Good start”, a question about how to make internships attractive and meaningful for all. Several different open data sources were provided to the teams by amongst others Gävle Innovation Arena, Digg, Swedish Employment Agency, Västra Götalandsregionen, Municipality of Gävle and SCB.

The winning team was OG Solutions with the idea “A good map”. The team behind the idea consists of an engineer, one schoolteacher, a project manager and a strategic advisor.  The winners will in addition to the price sum of 15.000 SEK receive business coaching by Gävle based incubator Movexum and one month of office hot desk at Do Space.

Hack for Gävle

Hack for Gävle – Interviews

About Hack for Gävle

The Hack for Gävle hackathon was held for the first time in Gävle 2020. It was free of charge and open for everyone. No special skills were required for those who signed up to participate, such as programming. Being an innovative team player with an interest in creating smart cities in a sustainable way was enough. Food as well as sleeping arrangements was provided for free for all participants in need of that. FPX arranged the hackathon and partners were Hack for Sweden, Openhack, Vinnova, Gävle kommun, Microsoft, Sandvik, Lantmäteriet och Nocco. Winners were team OG Solutions with Jakob Engvall, 27, Max Söderström, 27, Philip Olsson, 26 and Gustav Andersson, 27.