The world’s heard a lot of noise about hacking in the recent past. And somewhere in the din was a two day event, Random Hacks of Kindness (RHoK), which brought hackers together on a different and a constructive platform.
The world’s heard a lot of noise about hacking in the recent past. And somewhere in the din was a two day event, Random Hacks of Kindness (RHoK), which brought hackers together on a different and a constructive platform.
Held on 4th and 5th of December in Bangalore, RHoK saw 45 Indian hackers attempting to solve problems defined by organisations like United Nations, World Bank and the International Red Cross Society. The event brought together software engineers and disaster risk management experts in an effort to address disaster management issues and develop software for the same.
For instance, the application that bagged the first place, People Finder 2.0 developed by Ravi Shankar and Bhavani, matches the pictures of victims uploaded on the internet by relatives or friends, to pictures uploaded by volunteers through facial recognition and tries to connect and rescue people during disaster situations.
This Bangalore hackathon was part of a global meet with mirror events at 20 locations, including New York, Chicago, Buenos Aires, Berlin, Tel Aviv, Sao Paulo and Birmingham. Google India played host on the 4th and Glomantra Inc offered space on the 5th as RHoK spilled on to a second day. Todd Khozein, RHoK’s operational lead, gave the keynote address. Khozein is the founder of SecondMuse, a firm that inspires innovations through collaborations in science.
On the second day, the hackers presented their hacks to a panel of judges. They were judged on creativity, utility, practical application and impact on a local and global level. Some of the other hacks that won awards are Get It Right Away! (GIRA), GIRA on IM, I am not OK, Helpout and Locate the Victim.
Locate the Victim, which won third place at the event, was developed by Elhaam Naimi, a software engineer from LG. “It is a program installed on mobile phones. It comes in handy during disaster situations by sending the exact position of the victim to a server, making the process of locating the victim much simpler,” said Naimi.
The participants were very vocal about the impact of RHoK. Naimi pointed out, “it is a unique event that enabled people to apply their technical skills for the betterment of humanity.” Prashanth, who developed GIRA, elaborated: “The event provided a great platform for people to exhibit skills. RHoK is very different from other events as it is devoid of all forms of endorsements or publicity. It is focused on serving the society and not on money making.”
GIRA is a mobile application which stores a local database of hospital phone numbers in a phone. Since it is a local database, the app doesn’t require you to connect to the Internet, make a phone call or even send a text message in disaster situations.
And if you’re wondering about the next one, it’s already on the horizon. “The next hackathon at Bangalore will be held in six months time and it will continue to happen every six months from then on,” says Khozein.
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