The city of Brno, together with the groups Czechitas and BrnoAI, organized the first city hackathon. This is an event where programmers often work intensively on a project in collaboration with graphic and web designers. In this case, it was a hackathon on the open data of the city of Brno from the data.brno.cz portal. The goal was to develop an application that would improve the lives of the inhabitants or the city’s development.

The Brno hackathon involved 50 participants who formed teams of 2 to 5 people. In total, 12 teams competed. The opening ceremony occurred on Saturday, 9 April, at 9 am at CTP Czechitas House on Škrobárenská Street. From 10 am, the competition started and ended after 24 hours on Sunday, 10 April. Then the teams presented their applications, ideas, solutions or prototypes to the jury and all the participants of the event.

The evaluation jury comprised five members who are respected experts in their professions. Specifically, they were Jan Černocký (specialist in artificial intelligence and speech technologies from FIT BUT), Jan Boček (data journalist from iROZHLAS), Martin Cígler (Chairman of the Board and CEO, Solitea, a. s.), Matěj Karolyi (software specialist at Oracle NetSuite) and Oliver Pospíšil (Secretary of the Brno City Council).

The jury appreciated the high level of the projects presented, from which it was difficult to choose only the best ones. However, all the projects will be analysed in more detail so as to make the most of them for the city and its citizens. Therefore, thanks to all participants for their great ideas and work.