Zero Hackathon 2016

The Italian Society for International Organization (SIOI - UNA Italy) together with the Students’ Movement for International Organization (MSOI/UNYA-Italy), in partnership with the United States Diplomatic Mission to Italy, and with the technical support of Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), will launch ZERO Hackathon.

160 highly motivated young students, representing universities from around the world, will convene in Rome, at FAO, from 30th November to 2nd December, 2016, to attend the first youth hackathon on the most pressing international issues related, but not limited, to SDGs, climate change, sustainability, zero hunger generation, food and agriculture.

ZERO is an international competition for interdisciplinary young students aimed at generating solutions with a significant impact on global challenges.

Participants will be invited to develop innovative high-impact ideas, projects, services and/or tools capable of meeting international requirements and presenting sustainable responses.

The young minds will be asked to work in team and submit their final proposal presenting a video and/or a ppt presentation during the pitch session that will take place on Friday, December 2nd.

Proposals will be assessed by a multidisciplinary jury according to their creativity, practicality, social impact, innovation.

The best proposal of each challenge will be awarded!

The event will also include the participation of prestigious institutional representatives, professionals and teachers who will make their knowledge and methods available to support teams in the development of their solutions.

ZERO will serve as a youth hub creating a connection between learning and doing, enabling young people to share information, promote the use of creativity and the importance of cooperation and team work, tackle the most important global challenges.

Last but not least, participating in ZERO is considered a preferential requisite to be selected as the next Italian Youth Delegate!

ZERO is where we start from in building up this Zero Hackathon as an innovative competition that will bring ideas and innovative solutions to challenging problems taking into considerations the proposal of the new generation.

We have shaped this challenge as a unique marathon of ideas starting from ZERO: ZERO as for involving the new talented youth; ZERO as finding completely new solutions and, last but not least, ZERO as developing critical thinking in a dynamic environment to shape a new frontier of problem solving and developing proposals.

Finally, we start from ZERO to contribute to involve in the implementation of the new Sustainable Development Agenda the people that will be the most influenced by its effects: Youth!

The word "Hackathon" is a portmanteau of the words "hack" and "marathon" where "hack" is used in the sense of exploratory programming, referring to an event that brings together programmers and developers, designers and innovators, experts and problem solvers, as well as end-users to develop web and/or mobile app solutions in real-time, building innovative solutions to an identified challenge.

Hackathons embrace Design Thinking, a human-centered approach to innovation that first defines the problem and then implements the solutions, always with the needs of the user at the core of concept development. This process focuses on the need for: finding understanding, creating, thinking, and doing. At the core of this process there is a hidden goal embracing action and creation: by creating and testing something, you can continue to learn and improve upon your initial ideas.
Moreover, there is an increasing number of civic Hackathons devoted to a specific cause or purpose, where “hacking” is a creative problem solving. Civic Hackathons encourage participants to think “outside-the-box” and design unconventional solutions, actively engaging people in the development of answers that are based on their real needs and experiences.