For the second year in a row, students at both Purdue and Universidad Nacional de Colombia (UNAL) in Bogotá concurrently hacked open data to create a solution, in the form of an app, to a civic problem.
Sabine Brunswicker, associate professor of innovation and director of the Research Center for Open Digital Innovation, started IronHacks as a way to bring the concepts of open data, or data that is owned by the public, and civic hacking together at Purdue. Students analyze data and find a solution to a proposed civic problem during the course of the semester. It's a 21-day, four-stage competition.
Brunswicker first started working with Danny Sierra, who was in the process of a six-month stay at Purdue to finish his master's thesis, after he showed an interest in the competition. He then proposed to bring it back with him to UNAL to get Colombian students involved.
"He took over a role in Purdue's IronHacks competition because he's entrepreneurial and had experience with project management," Brunswicker says. "Once we figured out a plan to take it to Bogotá, we partnered with three professors at UNAL to establish the program."
Brunswicker now works with Professor Jairo Aponte at UNAL. Last year, during the first competition, 200 students participated. This year's winner from Purdue and the winner from UNAL will each receive a two-month internship in the other country. Brunswicker says the future plan is to work toward a more "true exchange" where the winners will spend a full semester in the other country.
The groups at Purdue and UNAL each receive datasets around a civic problem, such as safety or health, though the datasets are different for each country. Both competitions are also truly interdisciplinary - students from STEM to the humanities participate. The competition's goal is to establish a socio-technical mindset and create an awareness about the sociological and political facets of how people make decisions in everyday life.
"As a global organization, you can't just push an American product or solution. You have to use local talent and get local ideas," Brunswicker says. "For example, if you think about affordable housing, it's different in Colombia than it is in the U.S."
Brunswicker is looking forward to next year's competition and hopes to further integrate the two groups, even though they're working from different hemispheres. The UNAL winners of this year's Ironhacks are:
Community Spirit
Cristian Camilo, Alejandro Santamaria Perez and Pedro Alexander Higuera Firacative
Best Solution
Santiago Orloff, David Esteban Perdomo Cristancho and Diego Felipe Rodriguez Chaparro
Winning Spirit
Juan Camilo Lozano Mejía, Cristian Giovanny Laiton Gonzalez and Andres David Gonzalez Ortiz
IronHacks ceremony at Purdue