Hacking in a submarine: HackTheBlock Day 1

Today is the first day of the London Blockchain Week and it kicks off with a Blockchain focused Hackathon which they have called HackTheBlock . Today was the first day of the event.

A Hackathon is an event where large groups of people (predominantly developers, but sometimes designers and business-focused people) meet up in order to eat free pizza, doughnuts, nachos and drink copious amounts of fizzy drinks and beer. The idea being that when all of these ingredients are mixed in the correct quantity that there will be the modern equivalent of an apple landing on Isaac Newton's head. This can often go on for several sleep-deprived days before a winner is decided; and prizes are awarded.

There are sometimes themes or constraints imposed, to help guide the creativity in the direction that the sponsors of the event desire. In this case, HackTheBlock has two main streams or focuses:

• concepts that will help local, regional and national governments assist their citizens better
• creating immutable, trackable internal remittances within a country

I decided to create a project which fits into the first category.

The Hackathon is based in a building called Launch 22 (which was confusingly in building 31a) on a street in the trendy East side of London; near the Silicon Roundabout - which gets its name from the proliferation of Startup companies based around the Old Street Roundabout. Think Silicon Valley meets a gigantic sprawling mess of roads.

Outside Launch 22 I was greeted by this nice inspirational quote from Bill Gates

I chose a lazy person to do a hard job because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.

Obviously he's never met someone like Wally from the Dilbert comics.

I arrived punctually, which allowed me to grab a prime spot to set up on, on the large wooden desk occupying most of the room. The office space was minimalistic and had an industrial theme to it; there was very little natural lighting, lots of concrete and exposed metal. The walls were adorned with framed certificate of incorporation of a wide range of companies and sketches of semi-nude women

Shortly afterwards the pizzas arrived and bottle tops were twisted off of bottles of Budweiser. Personal space became a thing of the past. With the lack of windows, the long narrow room started to feel like (what I imagine) being onboard a submarine

The ingredients started to mix, I started to mingle and a team was formed.

Our current plan is to try and improve the way that we vote on matters, whether it is at a local level or country wide (such as a general election for our Prime Minister), using some form of Blockchain technology. Ideally, I would like to see if there is a way to help inform our politicians and leaders how people feel about issues within in a matter of hours without all of the costs of referendums or elections.

By Sunday afternoon we will need to come up with a team name.

Wish us luck!