First-ever hackathon showcases innovative and unique solutions to challenging sustainability challenges

PARIS, France – KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe – March 22, 2024 – The Cloud Native Computing Foundation® (CNCF®), which builds sustainable ecosystems for cloud native software, today announced the first, second, and third-place winners of CloudNativeHacks. 

During KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2024, CNCF, in collaboration with the United Nations, hosted its first-ever hackathon, CloudNativeHacks, to focus on advancing the delivery of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Sponsored by Heroku, the aim was for individuals and teams to develop a proof of concept to help support these development goals, working together to solve pressing issues and contribute meaningfully to creating a better, more sustainable world.

CloudNativeHacks Winners

First place: Team Urban Unity – Carolina Lindqvist and Syed Ali Raza Zaidi, which addresses SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities and SDG 17: Partnerships for the Goals.

Team Urban Unity from Switzerland and the UK developed a proof of concept for a platform that democratizes urban planning policies. They created a map where urban planners can drop a pin if they want to create a new building, but perhaps the local neighbors want to create a park and so can provide feedback about it. It is a platform for the people and run by the people. 

Second place: Team Forrester – Radu-Stefan Zamfir, Alex-Andrei Cioc, George-Alexandru Tudurean, which addresses SDG 13: Climate Action and SDG 15: Life on Land.

Team Forrester, from Romania, developed an app that spreads awareness and handles automatic detection and monitoring of deforestation globally, leveraging AI, open source software, and publicly available data such as satellite imagery. 

Third place: Team Potato – Inhwan Hwang, Sungjin Hong, and Myeonghun Yu which addresses SDG 5: Gender Equality and SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities

Team Potato from Korea developed a project that creates a crowd-guarded route, a collaborative map using luminance to gauge the safety of a chosen walking path.

“As we celebrate ten years of Kubernetes, it has been an honor to see #TeamCloudNative come together to use cloud native technologies to help create a more sustainable future,” said Arun Gupta, Vice President and General Manager, Open Ecosystem at Intel and Chairperson of the Governing Board for CNCF. “I am so proud of the participants and want to congratulate the winners.”

“Congratulations to the winners of the first-ever CloudNativeHacks event,” said Priyanka Sharma, Executive Director of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation. “It was inspiring to see the diverse and innovative ideas and I am thrilled that cloud native technologies were the building blocks  for creating applications that help impact our world for generations to come.” 

“As a technology that accelerates the development of applications, it is great to support the first ever CloudNativeHacks and see applications that help with the sustainability of our planet built in just two days,” said Bob Wise, CEO of Heroku. “We look forward to seeing how these applications can change the future.”

The hackathon was presided over by a panel of judges from the cloud native community and the United Nations, including:

Winners received $10,000, $5,000, and $2,500 respectively. 

Additional Resources

About Cloud Native Computing Foundation

Cloud native computing empowers organizations to build and run scalable applications with an open source software stack in public, private, and hybrid clouds. The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) hosts critical components of the global technology infrastructure, including Kubernetes, Prometheus, and Envoy. CNCF brings together the industry’s top developers, end users, and vendors, and runs the largest open source developer conferences in the world. Supported by more than 800 members, including the world’s largest cloud computing and software companies, as well as over 200 innovative startups, CNCF is part of the nonprofit Linux Foundation. For more information, please visit www.cncf.io.

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