There are a number of wrong things happening with the climate throughout the world. To improve the climate situation in the world, EIT Climate-KIC organizes a yearly hackathon, Climathon. The hackathon is held on 25th October, every year, the Global Climathon Day. There are over 150 cities that organize the said hackathon that provides a handful of solutions. The solutions are then judged on their levels of practicality to be further implemented and invested upon. Karachi Climathon 2019 is the regional iteration of the global Climathon Hackathon organized by the European Union.
The Hack Embassy organized the second iteration of the Karachi Climathon since its first edition in 2018. This is a mature and welcoming step towards the fresh climate-conscious ideas of different individuals.
This year, the event consisted of the inaugural Climathon Global Awards. The Global Awards included city-winners who secured opportunities to present their ideas at ChangeNOW Summit scheduled for 31st January 2020. The participants of the Summit will be competing for up to #18,000 in prizes.
Karachi Climathon 2019 – Introductory Address
Durlabh Ashok, Co-Founder Hack Embassy, initiated the event with an informative and interactive introductory address. The participants were enlightened about the climate challenges present in the world, currently. These challenges were highlighted and documented by UNDP Pakistan and Shehri-CBE. As per the rules, the teams started to brainstorm for solutions once the challenges were on the table. The teams were intelligently paired with overseeing mentors, this proved to be extremely fruitful for the participants.
It is an undeniable fact that thinking consumes a lot of energy without physical work. This means concentrated thinking must have its consequences of frustration for the participants. To cater to this issue, the organizers had planned interesting activities to maintain the energy level of the participants by reinstating their interest in the interactive event.
Workshops
The participants were showered with a number of meaningful workshops to understand the necessary directives for supervised learning and understand the process of generating solutions.
Mr. Danish Ejaz from Madvertising walked through the basics of Design Thinking in an interactive workshop.
Although solutions are supposed to be more user-centric and less prone to just generating heaps of revenue, but Syed Rizwan Ali (Bahria University) conducted a workshop on Business Model Canvas to elaborate the Business Model Canvas and explained how solutions should also be weighed according to revenue generation.
You brainstormed the perfect solution for a problem. What’s the next step? Pitching it to attract attention of investors? To explain just that, Ms. Farwah Shariff from Centre of Excellence in Responsible Business (CERB) conducted a workshop on Elevator Pitching.
Panel Discussions & Fireside Chats
Other than interactive workshops, an intelligent blend of panel discussions and fireside chats allowed different inspiring youth leaders to inculcate the spirit of sustainability and entrepreneurship in the participants.
Best Solutions – Karachi Climathon 2019
As per the provided problems at the start of the event, different teams came up with a total of eighteen ideas that were pitched before the judges’ panel. Amongst the unique, intuitive, and implementable solutions, two best ideas were handpicked to be awarded as winners and runners up.
WINNER: Innosix
RUNNER-UP: Dot.io
The conclusion of the Hack Embassy’s second Karachi Climathon shows a number of conclusions that demand attention. Pakistani minds are still extremely raw and if provided proper structuring, marketing techniques then this raw talent can reap a lot more than they will sow.