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After going to a few hackathons, I observed a trend of mostly useless, tech-bubble oriented products developed. So I had the idea of a marketplace style site wh

After going to a few hackathons, I observed a trend of mostly useless, tech-bubble oriented products developed. So I had the idea of a marketplace style site where people would talk about their problems, and simultaneously provide ideas for hackathon hackers. Then hackers would visit the site for ideas, and if they build a solution, they get users immediately--the people who were subscribed to that problem. This would also hopefully channel all that hacker power into useful products. Does anyone think that's worth building?

icebraining 11y ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/SomebodyMakeThis https://www.reddit.com/r/SomebodyMakeThis
myrryr 11y ago
The New Zealand Government did. There was a Hackathon last weekend around a bunch of problems that various government departments wanted to have solved. The people at the hackathon have has a week since to get their teams together and pitches for the next stage. The pitches are to the government department CEs, so people just under the ministers. If the pitch is accepted, then we get 3 months (paid) to be put though a Tech Accelerator (run by CreativeHQ) in Wellington and get the application in a state to be used. During which time the teams will form companies, get advice for how to run things, and have the government departments domain experts on hand to answer any questions we need and get feedback from them. At the end we get to demo our solutions to the departments. If they like them, then they will licence the results, and we have a bunch of new tech companies in New Zealand, with an existing cash flow. Seriously, this is it done right. Small companies / groups of developers (and designers, etc) get chances at solving problems which would normally go to the big guys in the industry. My team is presenting their pitch (Machine learning to help route problem tickets in various call centres) just after lunch today - I'm nervous as all hell :) --- Blair
- flashm 11y ago
  That sounds excellent, I wish there were something like it in the UK. Good luck with your pitch.
  - joshvm 11y ago
    There was Job Hack last October, though I didn't hear about anything coming out of it. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/join-the-job-hack-and-help-shape-the-future-of-a-generation https://www.gov.uk/government/news/join-the-job-hack-and-hel...

icebraining 11y ago

https://www.reddit.com/r/SomebodyMakeThis https://www.reddit.com/r/SomebodyMakeThis

myrryr 11y ago

The New Zealand Government did. There was a Hackathon last weekend around a bunch of problems that various government departments wanted to have solved. The people at the hackathon have has a week since to get their teams together and pitches for the next stage. The pitches are to the government department CEs, so people just under the ministers. If the pitch is accepted, then we get 3 months (paid) to be put though a Tech Accelerator (run by CreativeHQ) in Wellington and get the application in a state to be used. During which time the teams will form companies, get advice for how to run things, and have the government departments domain experts on hand to answer any questions we need and get feedback from them. At the end we get to demo our solutions to the departments. If they like them, then they will licence the results, and we have a bunch of new tech companies in New Zealand, with an existing cash flow. Seriously, this is it done right. Small companies / groups of developers (and designers, etc) get chances at solving problems which would normally go to the big guys in the industry. My team is presenting their pitch (Machine learning to help route problem tickets in various call centres) just after lunch today - I'm nervous as all hell :) --- Blair

flashm 11y ago
That sounds excellent, I wish there were something like it in the UK. Good luck with your pitch.
- joshvm 11y ago
  There was Job Hack last October, though I didn't hear about anything coming out of it. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/join-the-job-hack-and-help-shape-the-future-of-a-generation https://www.gov.uk/government/news/join-the-job-hack-and-hel...