Cork Airport has partnered with not-for-profit business group IT@Cork to host a hackathon event titled ‘FlyHackFly’. The event will take place in the arrivals area of Cork Airport in Ireland on October 2-3, 2015, and is part of the Startup Gathering, an annual event to promote new business startups in the country. FlyHackFly will be the first of a week-long schedule of 300 events.
IT developers, designers, marketers and entrepreneurs from Ireland, the UK and beyond, will take part in FlyHackFly to develop solutions to every-day travel problems in the categories of queuing, transportation, smart airport, premium and social.
Over the two-day period, the airport and its passengers will act as a live test bed, allowing the hackathon participants to research customer needs, validate their proposition and battle test their solution.
Fergus Murphy, CEO of Plus10 and convener of FlyHackFly, said, “We want to put Cork very firmly on the global hackathon map and create a showcase for the city’s great talent. We think we have done that. Now it’s up to those bright young minds to get online, register and show us what they can do. There has already been a lot of interest in the FlyHackFly hackathon and we’re hoping to make it an annual event in the Irish tech calendar.”
Niall MacCarthy, managing director at Cork Airport, said, “We are delighted to be hosting Cork’s first airport hackathon, which is promising to be a fantastic event. Cork Airport has always been ahead of its peers with our innovative use of technology. We were the first airport in the world to launch Flightradar24, a flight tracking feature on our app, as well as using the latest in technology to enhance the award-winning passenger experience at Cork Airport.”
FlyHackFly will be the world’s third airport hackathon following similar events at San Francisco International Airport in 2012 and a Paris/Amsterdam co-hosted event in June 2015. Registration for the event is free and is open to any interested teams or individuals.
For more information about the FlyHackFly event click here.