Looking for a way to provide you with a thorough account of the experience we had organizing Connecting Doers with Opportunity in Timișoara, we stumbled upon a personal blog post of our friend, Mihaela Ivan.
Thinking that we could not possibly offer a better description, and realizing that Mihaela managed to convey perfectly the vibe of both the event and the people there (at the Urban Talks and at the Hackathon), we asked nicely and we now present to you her own post, in order to share with as many people the remarkable things that we uncovered at the event in Timișoara.
So, here is how Mihaela saw it:
“When I started writing about the event and when I went there, I knew it was going to be something unconventional, centered around people who believe in a sustainable urban and technological future. After all, it was organized by Graţian Mihǎilescu, so the appropriate way to describe the whole thing is mindfulness.
You can find out more about the Urban Talks Agenda here.
Obviously, conveying everything that happened there exactly would be a rather impossible task, but there are 3 essential aspects that I have to point out:
- UrbanTalks managed to gather people from all over the world, people who always keep an eye out for the future and who succeeded in changing the life of urban communities in their activities…or at least their own life. They did not come to Bucharest, Budapest or Berlin, but here, to Timișoara and that was a unique chance to pick on some fascinating brains.
- We need to breathe inspiration, and that is precisely what UrbanTalks offered…more exactly 12 hours of that – ideas, positivism, models, values and projects. It was past 8 pm. that first day, and people were still present, debating, posing pertinent questions and talking about impact investment, alternative methods of financing and blockchain, with guests from Silicon Valley and Zurich.
- Meaningful friendships were born, assuring us that things will go on further.
- Next time, you have to come!
What if I also told you that during the Saturday and Sunday Innovation Hackathon, organizers offered prizes worth $10.000 in crypto-currency, along with the possibility of presenting the ideas of the projects (illustrating visions of a better, safer and more sustainable future) in front of the United Nations?
You can find more about this Innovation Hackathon here.
- Captured 1.0 won the prize for the “Future of the Community” category – a visualizing and corruption risk analisys system focused on public acquisitions. The prototype that was built in 36 hours managed to gather data for an entire country during a 4-year time span, in 4 different, high-value national public acquisition markets. The concept can be further developed into a visualizing and real-time risk analysis platform dealing with corruption risk within public acquisitions in 35 different countries. The project will have the chance of being presented in front of a United Nations Committee.
- The other projects of the category were: Hand2Hand – a user-friendly app designed for the management of necessary resources after a natural disaster; No Fake News – an add-on that invites users to classify information sources according to their level of reliability; ZeroCozi – an app that keeps live track of queues in different institutions, also allowing for a virtual ticket to be printed, informing the user of the estimated time he or she must be present in the queue
- In the “Future of Sustainable Production” category, all the 4 teams that participated received prizes in crypto-currency, as the jury decided to pair up projects that are complementary and that could grow further together.
- The first prize was therefore split between two projects (TrustChain and OpenRetail) that seek to simplify the foreign exchange market through more intelligent, more transparent and safer transactions in Blockchain. Both teams won $6000 worth of crypto-currency.
- The second prize, consisting of about $1500 worth of crypto-currency for each team, was split between Disrupting the Supply Chain and The first project attempts to simplify 3D printing using Blockchain, while the second one tries to improve the knowledge as well as the responsibility regarding the life cycle of every product.
UrbanizeHub is a platform for dreamers, believers and achievers, and for all of those who think they can live in a better world. It is for smart people who like to think outside the box and believe in the future of sustainable urban development. Graţian Mihǎilescu – UrbanizeHub founder
Our aim is that of creating a community of people that take action towards changing the face of cities. The first #UrbanTalks took place in Timișoara and had a major impact on the local community.
When we talk about cities, we talk about people that get things moving, about community leaders, an integrated vision and people with the same values, cooperating and operating in order to change the world, says Graţian.
2018 will bring Urban Talks to the whole country, as future events are expected in Iași, Cluj and Bucharest.
Thank you MihaelaIvan.ro
