HACKNIGHT

In the heart of Berlin’s Silicon Allee, lies ESMT – one of Germany’s elite Business schools. Helix was proud to sponsor the HackNight, a two-day hackathon organized by ESMT. The event was a first of its kind, with ESMT being the premier German B-School to host a tech event of this stature. More than 200 participants coming from across the world, actively engaged in disrupting the future of education. The event comprised of contestants with diverse backgrounds such as computer science, psychology, data science, and business development. Participants were assigned into teams that complimented their individual skillsets, with the task in hand to develop a solution that could impact traditional educational practices.

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Attendees were greeted by Helix Co-Founder, Marcel Fohrmann who kick-started the event by delivering a powerful speech on how Artificial Intelligence will change the world as we know it. In his speech, Marcel highlighted that AI is disrupting established industries, such as: healthcare, law and creative arts. The need of the hour is to transform existing educational systems to truly unleash the potential of innovative technologies such as AI and DLT. Following Marcel’s speech, one of our cognitive scientists David Neville, gave the audience an insight into digital innovations in education. David covered topics ranging from the history of education to technologies such as the HelixTangle that could transform the way we acquire knowledge.

Arne Steingraber, Helix’ Operations Lead, concluded the Tech Talk by highlighting the mission of the HelixFoundation – To support emerging technologies associated with Computer and Cognitive Science. The talk generated huge interest, signified by the response of the audience during the Q&A Session.

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Attendees were curious about potential applications of Distributed Ledger Technology and even more so as to how Helix could disrupt learning methods with the HelixTangle. Arne, David and Dan Cook were part of an exclusive mentor committee consisting of experienced professionals from BCG, Deutsche Bank, Daimler AG, and IBM. The mentors were responsible for assisting and answering questions raised by teams working towards developing an innovative product. After an intense 14-hour session of discussions and prototyping, teams were asked to present their solutions to a jury. Helix representatives were excited about the ideas pitched by the 25 different teams, incubating active discussions between the founders and participants about potential use cases on the HelixTangle.

The event provided a great platform for Helix to develop strong connections with the industry and exchange ideas on how the HelixTangle could potentially solve their problems.

Further, the Helix booth provided a visual means of understanding Distributed Ledger Technology and how it can upend a wide range of industries.

At the end of the event, “Project Athena” was adjudged the winner and rewarded with a check worth €5000 by Marcel Fohrmann. The project caught the eye of the jury with a pragmatic solution that provides personalized learning and education for schools and students via strengthening the data analysis and leveraging the value of big data, through machine learning and AI.

In short, the HackNight was an informative and fun-filled experience that provided a great intersection between academia, industry and technology!