Hackathon ends with a flurry of ideas
Jonathan Murphy
Technology & Creativity Blog editor
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Former Tomorrow's World presenter Maggie Philbin ends the Hackathon
Exhausted but enthusiastic teams of developers and journalists finally ended their at New Broadcasting House on Friday. The top five ideas were presented to a judging panel of senior staff from Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Design & Engineering and Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ News, who were impressed by the quality of entries.
"We wanted all the ideas that were shortlisted, but that would be a cop-out," said Matthew Postgate, D&E's Chief Technology and Product Officer. "It's a testament to the amount of hard work put in." The winning idea was from Team React exploring the use of emojis to allow audiences both to react to stories and to drive their own news agenda according to their mood.
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The winning team
"It was intense but fun and very productive," said Magda Piatkowska, lead data scientist in Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ News' Audience Engagement & Data team, who organised the event. "A good number of people stayed throughout the night and were coding like crazy. Some went down to the newsroom to join the journalists there - it was brilliant."
The idea of a 24 hour hackathon came to her after her experiences working in the commercial sector in San Francisco. "Sometimes you just don't have enough time to develop ideas in the day-to-day environment, so this was a great opportunity to get different teams working together."
There'll be more reaction from those involved on this blog next week.