Ladies… Here’s a hackathon for you, just for you

Trycolyn Pikirayi Avatar

Just a few weeks to go before Zimbabwe’s first Young Entrepreneurial Women (YEW) all-female hackathon which will be taking place at the National Art Gallery, in Harare. The hackathon is being hosted by Ibuhub; a Pan African incubation and acceleration hub that identifies and brings together young people through tech and innovation.

Just so we in the same boat, a hackathon is according to my favourite description a ‘gang activity’. The gang (often) comprising of people with different expertise or from different fields, has to come up with a solution(s) for the specified problem – all from scratch. This has to be achieved within a specified time period too usually a weekend.

This YEW hackathon is taking place on the 18th of this month though prior to that, the participants will have to attend a ‘preparation’ workshop dubbed Build-In-A-Box on the 17th, which is being run by the African Leadership Academy who along with Anzisha, EcoCash, Co-creation hub and Google are the event partners.

Initially, as you might have seen from the flier, the hackathon was calling for females aged between 14 and 24; who have an appreciation of either media, digital marketing, graphic designing and/or coding but recently they indicated that they need a much more diverse group. So basically, whatever line of work or expertise you have, as long as it can be leveraged on in bettering the community then you’re more than welcome to register.

The registration process is simple, all you have to do is send ‘Women Hackathon’ to the Whatsapp number +26377415553 or email info@ibuhub.com. I don’t know if it was an isolated incident or not, but just in case the mail bounces for you too, don’t fret. Just re-send. Also, if you register early enough, you can get yourself a freebie in form of a t-shirt.

The required number of participants is 30, therefore there’s a chance that some screening will be done. I know most people are quite reluctant to participate in activities that involve some screening of some sort… but really what’s there to lose??? Did I mention it’s all for free? Both the registration and participation? See? Even more reason to try it out.

I know hackathons can be intense considering that not only will you be working under the clock, but like in this case, you will likely be working with people you’d have just met. Team work is almost always easier when you know the people you’re working with because not only can you then leverage on each other’s strengths and weaknesses better, but generally, environments feel safer and much more conducive around familiar faces – unless or otherwise.

However in spite of that, hackathons are mostly interesting and very efficient. They often produce innovative solutions over relatively short periods of time. Also, from my experience, hackathons are quite useful in that you don’t only get to explore and know other people, but you also get to surprise yourself through discovering traits and/or knowledge you never knew you actually had.

As I mentioned earlier on, participation is absolutely free. Therefore, not only are you going to get an interesting experience at no cost at all, but you also stand a chance to enter the Anzisha competition which has a $100 000 grand prize… and not to mention the free lunch 😉 so ladies, there you have it…

One response

  1. claris mutanga

    looking forward to it.Recently finished filling my survey

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