http://www.renepal.org

1. Information and collaboration session
May 27, 2015
Prof. Omprakash Gnawali (University of Houston)
on behalf of the entire organizing team

2. Theme of this Hackathon
• Role of technology and technologists
during disaster relief and post-disaster
rebuilding, recovery, and
reconstruction
• Relief = Immediate
• Rebuild = Long term

3. Hackathon
Compress your learning and execution
in a short 12 or 24 hour session
Demo or working prototype is key to
learning

4. Hackathon after
Earthquake
• Open Street Map
• Ushahidi
• Crowdsource Reporting
• Conjunction with Call Center
• Real time view of crisis spots and resources to guide
connection
Source:
http://techpresident.com/news/wegov/23477/techies
-gather-port-au-prince-haitis-first-hackathon

5. Example: Atlanta
Govathon
• Polls for Government: Each person has
a voice
• Adopt a school: Crowdshare the cost
• SkillMatch: Match employees and
employers with specific skills
• Many more …
Source:
http://govathon.com/projects.html

6. Ideas from hack4nepal
• https://geekli.st/hackathon/Nepal?tab=projects

7. Take Aways
• Meet your colleagues: This is our
community working together to make
a better Nepal
• Review the example projects for
inspiration
• Make diverse teams

8. Logistics Reminders
• Remember to form your teams
• Remember to research and read
about project ideas
• Come to the Hackathon 15 minutes
early
• Bring your sleeping bags (OR NOT)

9. Team Forming
• Try to have a diverse team.
• Registrant statistics:
o42% Frontend Developers
o23% Backend Developers
o11% Mobile Developers
o10% Designers
o13% Other (Hacker, Idea Generator,
Python)

10. Prizes to the Winning
Ideas
• Cash Prizes
o1st place: Rs. 35,000
o2nd place: Rs. 25,000
o3rd place: Rs. 15,000

11. Ideas
• Your idea has to be usable by
users (government, relief
organizations, volunteers, etc.)
• It might be a cool idea, but if
there are no users, it does not
add value to the community.

12. Simplicity of Ideas
• E.g. Google spreadsheet, Google forms was very
useful in coordinating the efforts during the relief
efforts. Make no mistake, these are complex tools
(technologically speaking) but are tools that are
readily available and are intuitive and easy to use
• This means do not go for some complicated solution
just because it is technologically sophisticated. E.g.
advanced machine learning system, computer
vision system, etc.

13. Ecosystem
• Identify risks for adoption (this is a
startup perspective)
• Technical risk is usually not that risky
• Is your product usable?
• Is your product serving a need?
• Will the users adopt your product?
• Does the model work?

14. Few Last Tips…
• Don’t reinvent
• Specialize instead of targeting a broad
category
• E.g. Uber: it is a USD 40 billion dollar
company, it specializes on one
need: get you a ride, it is usable. It
does one thing and does it well!
• Don’t think about creating a
broad category of products