Uniting Kingdoms - AEC Hackathon goes to London


The AEC Hackathon 2.4 was this past weekend in London. Held at Future Cities Catapult's Urban Innovation Centre, the weekend long event brought together technology developers with professionals from the built environment to create technology solutions to industry problems. While I was unable to physically attend due to my work schedule, I was still able to remote MC on the big screen and keep things going thanks to great Internet connection.

 
 The really exciting things about this AEC Hackathon for me are it was the first one outside of the United States and the first one supported and locally organized by a government entity. The local lead organizer was Simon Hart from Innovate UK. Innovate UK is the UK's innovation agency that works with people, companies and partner organizations to find and drive the science and technology innovations that will grow the UK economy.


Simon and team did an amazing job with the help of AEC Hackathon board member Paul Doherty that was onsite in the UK. The challenges ranged from the usual AEC hack categories to those that used London city data. One team even created an application that worked with a hologram system. 


To be expected, the teams developed some pretty amazing hacks.

Winners
Best Overall Project: Team Ghost BIM Squad
Best Open Source Project: Team Optioneers
Innovate UK Hack Challenge - Mind the Gap: Team Gapathon
Autodesk Challenge: Team Ghost BIM Squad
National BIM Service Challenge: Team Massive
Future Cities Catapult Challenge: Team Gapathon
Energy Savings Trust Challenge: Team Gapathon  



Additional information about the event can be read at these blogs:
News Innovate UK Simon Hart's Blog: WTH just happened Pt 1
Autodesk Developer Network Blog: London #AECHackathon, Revit 2016 API Leader Attachment
Logical Errors Blog: AEC Hackathon – A participants perspective



Way to go UK AEC Hackers in making the first event overseas a smashing success. There will be another one next summer planned in London so get ready now!

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