Over an exhilarating 52 hour long weekend, Ambrosus participated as a Hackathon Challenge Co-Organiser at the Food Hack 2017 event. The environmentally focused hackathon challenge sources and pools together the talent of individuals with expertise from across different industries, all determined to innovate towards, or hack, a more sustainable and responsible future of food production and distribution. The Impact Hub Geneva was host to some 60 participants this year, diversely ranging in ages, backgrounds and countries, even coming from as far as Australia!

The event kicked off with presentations of the three different challenges, which were:

To provide traceability and provenance information to consumers, proposed by Ambrosus and Ricolab To tackle food waste in the city of Lausanne, proposed by Impact Hub and The Sustainable Living Lab To develop urban agriculture in the future One Planet Living (OPL) neighborhood which is to be developed in Orbe, proposed by WWF Switzerland

After the presentations, participants who were motivated with a solution to any of the challenges had the opportunity to pitch their idea for one minute. The best proposed ideas were then voted on, and participants divided into groups to work towards developing a pitch deck over the next few days. After a few hours, certain groups began to merge, to capitalise on their combined knowledge and increase their chances.

However, the 52 hour event was not solely about work, as a yoga course was available in the morning, as well as several useful workshops led by mentors. Participants were given the opportunity to learn about data and language analysis utilising AI, blockchain technology, as well as pitching and fundraising, which gave them valuable insights for building their projects. And of course, to feed all these active brains, all throughout the weekend delicious, nutritional and sustainable food was available from the regional and local start-ups of Switzerland.

As the Sunday dead-line for submitting the projects approached, the atmosphere became electric, and a palpable excitement abounded. While teams were reviewing their pitches there was frenzied activity: paper cutting and wood gluing, and the consistent sound of furious typing. Finally, then came time for the final nine pitches before the jury of challengers.

Audience members were asked to switch off the Wi-Fi on their smart-phones, so that it would be fully operational for the teams during the presentations of their prototypes, and silence descended. Although often the teams ran out of time to present their projects completely, they managed to capture the absolute attention and interest of their audience, and facilitated lively discussion from the jurors, who asked very engaged questions. The overall criteria for winning the challenges focused on the business potential of the ideas, whether they were about meeting consumer needs, the technical and design execution, team strength, and the presentation of the pitches. After half an hour of deliberation, although jury members were immediately in agreement over the strongest proposals, three winners were chosen for the three challenges.

The winning team of the food waste challenge were Food Cycle, who proposed an app which would allow retailers and restaurants to share when their stock of food was nearing the end of its shelf-life and offer it at lowered prices, in order to make use of food at every stage of its cycle and reach customers who might benefit most from lowered prices — thus, tackling food waste. The team was offered the possibility of joining the incubation programme of an Impact Hub in the region.

Copernicus Aquaponic won the urban agriculture challenge, put forward by WWF Switzerland. They proposed an entirely new method of aquaponics agriculture, with a lower cost and energy demand, in order to result in an increased productivity of the produce and a variety in culture. This project may very well come to be implemented in the future OPL neighbourhood to be completed in Orbe in 2018. A prototype will most probably be piloted very soon.

S-man won the traceability and provenance challenge presented by Ambrosus and Ricolab. They proposed an app for families, for both parents and children to use, that would encourage them to learn more about the origins of the products they are buying, as well as the impact the production of each product has on the environment. Further, they would partner with an NGO that might agree to counter by planting a tree for each consumer when they reach a certain amount of sustainability points, which could be earned by buying sustainable foods and produce, etc. The team was offered the chance to integrate their idea within Ricolab’s existing innovation sprint, as well as each team member receiving a cash prize from Ambrosus and Ricolab.

Three separate prizes were also rewarded independently to three participants who had shown outstanding skills in either their business model, design or coding submissions.

The FoodHack event was the perfect means for Ambrosus to discover and tap the new talent and ideas that are out there. Some participants of the event are to be invited to Ambrosus’ headquarters to pitch in front of the senior team, and will perhaps be offered internships to develop their concepts in-house.

The issue of traceability and provenance was clearly an important one for most participants, as most projects, at some point, attempted to tackle the lack of information that is out there in their prototypes, and improve the access consumers have to this information. Overall, there are very good ideas and the motivation to realise them out there, that will make possible a more sustainable and responsible future for food.

Ambrosus will be organising more Hackathons to discover talent and new use cases for its blockchain. All interested parties should contact info [at] ambrosus . com in order to discuss possible collaboration.