Vilnius Is Open to Smart City Ideas: Hack4vilnius Starts on 30 September

Hack4Vilnius, a hackathon promoting sustainability and offering innovations for Vilnius, calls to form teams and generate ideas for the capital city. Taking place from 30 September to 2 October, the event will aim to make Vilnius even cleaner, smarter, healthier, and ensure sustainable mobility. Hack4Vilnius is moving from Saulėtekis to the Vilnius Gediminas Technical University (VILNIUS TECH) Creativity and Innovation Centre LinkMenų Fabrikas, where participants will be invited to develop not only software and digital systems but also to prove their engineering skills by building prototypes.

Almost 80 ideas for Vilnius

The fifth Hack4Vilnius hackathon has already offered the capital city almost 80 ideas to improve parking in the city, encourage people to give up disposable items, or carpool to save fuel and free the city from traffic jams. This year’s list of challenges for the hackathon participants will include the development of a tool allowing all modes of transport to travel in Vilnius, the control of parking spaces in the city, and the ambition to not only monitor the removal of garbage in the city but also to find solutions to reduce the amount of waste, and many others.

During the event, participants will have the opportunity to consult with mentors from the fields of business development, intellectual property protection, communication and marketing, sustainable mobility, and more. The hackathon participants will have the opportunity to listen to presentations by professionals in their field and deepen their knowledge of intellectual property and business model development. On the event’s last day, participants will be given a presentation on the most important aspects of presenting an idea to help teams prepare for their pitch to the jury.

Hack4Vilnius - opening of the innovation season

The ideas generated during Hack4Vilnius led one of the teams to a social business, which they have been successfully developing for five years. The winning team of Hack4Vilniu 2017 came up with GetPet, an app for those looking to foster a pet from an animal shelter. The app, which has been downloaded more than 10,000 times and is based on the popular Tinder app, has captivated not only Lithuanian portals but has also been featured in The Washington Post, CNN, and other news outlets.

Hack4Vilnius 2020 winner MyWonderbird has developed an app of the same name that offers a smart and productive tour around various locations in Vilnius. The team is currently on hold with further app development but sees the hackathon as a very positive experience.

“Taking part in the Hack4Vilnius hackathon was an excellent experience. Even if we hadn’t won, the weekend spent working on the idea went really well. Although we didn’t manage to develop the idea as we wanted, that’s no reason not to try to bring great ideas to Vilnius, Lithuania, and the world,” says Simonas Naulickas representing the team.

Lituanica, who will be participating in Hack4Vilnius for the third time, is returning to the event because they want to catch the “innovation fever,” which strengthens the desire to continue generating ideas and implementing them during and after the event.

“The main advantage of Hack4Vilnius is that participants are not boxed into a specific topic. Instead, the challenges cover a wide range of areas of the capital city’s life and the participating teams can easily choose to develop the idea closest to them. After 1 September, Hack4Vilnius becomes like the opening of another innovation season for our team, a chance to work on the new ideas that have accumulated over the summer,” says Algirdas Augustaitis, a member of the Lituanica X team.

Teams will compete for valuable prizes

Cognizant Technology Solutions Lithuania established the grand prize of €1,500. The teams will also compete for a cash prize of €500 from Metida, as well as a legal consultation on intellectual property worth €500. The team winning a €1,000 scholarship from CodeAcademy for a course of their choice will get a chance to improve their coding knowledge. To make sure the ideas generated during the hackathon are not “put in a drawer,” the event partner Startup Lithuania will give the opportunity to further develop one of the ideas in the Startup Guide pre-accelerator, and the VILNIUS TECH LinkMenųFabrikas will invite to spend three months developing one of the prototypes created during the hackathon.

If you know what it takes to make Vilnius an even cleaner, healthier, and smarter city, we invite you to propose a challenge to Hack4Vilnius participants here. 

Registration for the Hack4Vilnius hackathon is open until 26 September at 11:59 PM. Fill in the registration form here.

Hack4Vilnius 2022 is organized by Vilnius Gediminas Technical University, Vilnius University, Saulėtekis Valley Science and Technology Park, and Cognizant Technology Solutions Lithuania.