I was at #b_hack

I participated in the 'Baltic sea region Hackathon' at the University of Applied Sciences in Lübeck (THL). My Team and I won the Audience Award for having the most liked project. A detailed report about the what and the why can be found in this article published by the THL.

To summarize my own experience, my team and I made a Dashboard to visualize the environment using marine data from the baltic sea. Our goal was to show what is possible with modern technologies to improve awareness of natural risks and current problems, regarding the baltic sea states. We also wanted to highlight exactly how this could be done and what benefits it would bring to the people.

Our proposal was to realize this dashboard with highly up-to-date data by HELCOM, if someones decides to actually implement it for the public. Since we only really had one day to throw together a working prototype it is not the prettiest thing. But that's nothing a little more work can't fix. Here is what it could look like:

Some key features would be that it has the buttons which make up the observed cirteria (in this case water quality) to the left, which would toggle a additive heat map to the left, and seperate graphs to the right. The data should never be obstructed by UI elements and the user should always be aware of what is currently being shown.

But of course, we were not the only group there. My favorites amongst the other very interesting groups were the echo chamber detection group, which focused on visualizing echo chambers from Twitter messages to potentially minimize concentrated disinformation towards users. And the deepfake group which researched how easy it really is to create deepfakes and what people should know about it.

All in all it was a great event, where everyone learned something new and came up with solutions to current real-life problems. Be it about how to combat disinformation, work with AI, or which beer tastes the best. Especially some of the foreign participants were quite fond of the german drinking culture, it seems. This being my first Hackathon, I am excited to join many others to create, innovate and learn about how we can make the world a better place.