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[...] "When I heard about it, I thought it was a joke. Vatican, hackathon—it didn’t add up," says John Franklin, a senior at Northwestern University who found out about VHacks, the event's official name, while participating in another hackathon in 2017. It wasn’t until he saw the event’s themes—creating technological solutions for encouraging social inclusion, promoting interfaith dialogue, and providing resources to migrants and refugees—that he realized it was not only real, but something he wanted to take part in. "I thought, ‘This is unique,’" he says.
And, apart from the unusual experience of hacking inside a room that dates back to 1490, it did prove to be special for Franklin. “At other hackathons, I’m creating, like, a shopping API or something for social media,” he says. “Here, I felt like my pitch means something to people.” Holy See, Holy Do
The Vatican's first-ever codefest came together last year after Jakub Florkiewicz, an MBA student at Harvard Business School, met the Reverend Eric Salobir, a founder of Optic, the first Vatican-affiliated think tank on technology, during a Harvard leadership summit in Rome. He and Salobir, who had already organized hackathons through Optic, began talking about putting one together in Vatican City.
Inside the Vatican's First-Ever Hackathon
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 4, Interesting) by canopic jug on Wednesday March 14 2018, @05:55AM (1 child)
I'm not so sure that Wired is with it any more with technology terminology. What the article describes seems to be a coding contest or maybe an app contest. Hackathons have always been collaborative and working towards producive goals rather than doing 36 hours of speed + caffeine and then throwing something over the fence during the last 5 minutes. The result might even be incremental.
It also says that M$ representatives were on site for the contest. I supposed they tucked in their tails but the horns would have shown when they took off their hats to enter the bulding. :>
I suppose their interference there was a direct response to and counter-attack for Pope Francis' recent statements about technology and inclusion [ted.com] (sorry for the TED link, but every few years they do get an interesting speaker), especially his second point. M$ has never let highly visibile actions or statements on the topic go unavenged. I don't see them starting now.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 2) by ants_in_pants on Wednesday March 14 2018, @05:14PM
>doing 36 hours of speed + caffeine and then throwing something over the fence during the last 5 minutes.
every hackathon I've been to was like that
-Love, ants_in_pants