Techfugees Conference & Hackathon
Moved by the plight of refugees in Europe, a number of technology industry people have formed a small voluntary team to create the free, non-profit, “Techfugees” conference on October 1st in Central London, at Skillsmatter.
On October 2nd we will be running a “Hackathon” with the Telefonica-backed accelerator, WAYRA, to work on tech solutions and products to aid both refugees and agencies.
We’d like you to come.
The background:
In the last 48 hours our Facebook Group and Twitter account has exploded, with over 700 people from the tech community signing up. There is clearly a huge desire amongst the tech community to get involved.
This will be an entirely non-profit event to bring together tech engineers, entrepreneurs and startups together with NGOs and other agencies in order to address the crisis in ways where the technology world can bring its considerable firepower.
Our partners for the conference and hackathon are Skillsmatter and WAYRA. More partners will be announced soon.
SPEAKER SO FAR FROM:
UNHCR
Rewired State
Paula Schwarz, StartupBoat
Anne Kjær Riechert, Refugees On Rails
Marieme Jamme, Africa Gathering
Bernhard Niesner, Busuu language-learning startup
Marianne Bouchart, HEI-DA Data journalism institute
On October 2nd we will be running a “Hackathon” with the Telefonica-backed accelerator, WAYRA, to work on tech solutions and products to aid both refugees and agencies.
The aims of the Hackathon are to start working on products and solutions that can be fed into the I Am Here Hackathon in Berlin, run by Rewired State, on October 3rd. This will increase the chances of tech products being deployed by Winter.
We would like you to come and engage with the tech community so that we can help discuss and build solutions.
We are also looking for sponsors to cover the costs of the event.
Please email mike@techfugees.com about the event content and petra@twistedtree.co.uk to sponsor the costs of the event.
Techfugees Conference
WHERE:
Skillsmatter at CodeNode, 10 South Place, London, EC2M 7EB
WHEN:
October 1st
9am – 5.30pm
Lunch and coffee/tea will be served.
ATTENDANCE:
300 people
AGENDA:
This will be circulated in the next few days. Speaker suggestions can be sent to mike@techfugees.com