Innovation Hackathon in collaboration with i24NEWS

By Shir Dayan & Sofia Alcalay

Last week, we took part in the i24NEWS Hackathon challenge hosted by the Adelson School of Entrepreneurship. We were tasked with the challenge of utilizing i24’s existing international news platform to facilitate a dialogue between different perspectives, engaging young (18-25) audiences worldwide. Seeing as this is one of the most pressing issues we are currently facing in society today, coming up with a solution in a few hours and presenting it to a panel of judges was no easy feat.

After a collaborative brainstorming session, we were able to come up with an out-of-the-box solution. An integration into the current i24NEWS app, that draws inspiration from a “dating app” style interface. The integration first prompts users to create a basic profile that will help the matching algorithm pair them with people who they could have a constructive conversation with. Users would swipe between topics, each one paired with a “meet me in the middle statement”, a fact or headline drawn directly from the i24NEWS content that both sides would like to start the conversation from. We believed that the “dating app” style interface would be not only user friendly, but familiar to the specific target demographic.

The teams were randomly selected, which gave us the chance to work closely with people we haven’t worked with before. One of the main challenges we faced as a group was the short time frame of the event, which we tackled by quick delegation of tasks and constant communication.

Overall, participating in the hackathon was a valuable and unique experience that broke our routine and taught us the value of hyper-focused, team-oriented work. We want to extend a big thank you to the organizers of the event, and we are looking forward to our next challenge.