About Blank is delighted to present HKD (HacKeD), a new series of Hackathons coming to Belfast in 2022. The inaugural HKD will be hosted on Saturday 24th September at the stunning PwC Merchant Square office.
With support from headline sponsor Dailypay, this first edition of the hackathon series will bring together some of the brightest minds and emerging talents within the technology sector to compete against each other and develop data driven solutions to the challenges.
HKD expects to attract over 120 participants, including software engineers, developers, artificial intelligence and machine learning specialists and data scientists. The event will also welcome students and graduates to what promises to be the new benchmark in Hackathon events in Ireland.
The hackathon is kindly supported by DailyPay NI and hosted by PwC. SyncNI, are our official media partner.
You can register now on www.aboutblankcreative.com/hkd
Growing demand
The last decade has seen the Northern Irish tech industry grow exponentially. Businesses within the digital, ICT and Creative Industries are creating hundreds of exciting career opportunities and HKD will provide an opportunity for those tech professionals to showcase their skills to potential employers, but also, importantly, to provide an opportunity for our competitors to make connections, meet friends and learn from each other.
HKD will provide an ideal opportunity for organisations and individuals to connect and to learn from each other. HKD participants will be able to challenge themselves, compete against others, gain experience and skills, all while enjoying a friendly and safe environment with like-minded people. Anyone who likes the challenge of creating a solution that can be developed into the next big thing, or who simply likes to hack, practice coding and test their knowledge amongst friends (old and new), will have a great time at HKD (HacKeD)!
Richard Willis, Director of About Blank said: “We are delighted to launch HKD in Belfast. We have delivered many events within the technology sector over the past 7 years, including the well-established Big Data Belfast, and we look forward to welcoming over 120 participants to HKD (HacKeD) in September. These events play a key role within the technology ecosystem here in NI, providing a platform for like-minded people to come together and take part in some competitive hacking. They also provide an opportunity to meet prospective employers too, which is important”.
Richard added: “I’d like to take the opportunity to thank our headline sponsors, DailyPay. We have worked with them for a while now and know how passionate they are about the tech industry here in NI. Thanks also to PwC for hosting HKD (HacKeD) in their stunning offices in Merchant Square. Our participants will be very well looked after!”
Paul Hill, Managing Director of DailyPay NI said: “We are delighted to support the very first HKD (HacKeD) Hackathon here in Belfast. As a company that invests heavily in our people, events like this are key to help us meet new talent and reconnect with others and crucially, to see how competitors look at problems, work within teams and come up with solutions.”
Hill added: “At DailyPay, we are proud to be supporting initiatives such as HKD which are great for the tech community. The pandemic made it difficult for people to get together and events like HKD provide a platform for people to connect again, and to learn from peers and mentors. We have enjoyed supporting hackathons in the past and we know how popular they are for our participants. We are looking forward to a great day and to seeing some of the solutions the teams come up with.”
Louise Black, Partner and Chief Technology Officer at PwC Northern Ireland, said: “We’re delighted to have the opportunity to host the first HKD event in our Merchant Square office. Technology is one of the fastest growing sectors in Northern Ireland and we’re committed to continually upskilling our people in emerging technologies as this is the key to our and our clients’ success. We’ve invested in creating technology career pathways for our people through our Technology Degree Apprenticeship and Technology graduate programmes. We want to help drive innovation in the sector but we recognise that we can’t do this in isolation, we need to work together as a technology community. That’s why we’ve jumped at the chance to support HKD in this way – we want to help bring all parts of Northern Ireland’s tech ecosystem together to achieve great things through partnership.”
