Agriculture Hackathon Jan 9th-11th in Saskatchewan

Dec 17, 2015

Emerging Agriculture is back on again this year January 9th-11th 2016 at Innovation Place with some larger goals to continue on as the only agriculture based hackathon in Canada. Emerging Agriculture is a 3 day hackathon that connects non-students and students from all colleges (Commerce, Engineering, Computer Science, Agriculture) together to collaborate on agriculture based ideas. Emerging Agriculture's goal is to connect these individuals, with the anticipation that startup companies may emerge from their collaborations. Building off of our successful event last year, we are highlighting 4 main strategies to make this year’s hackathon the biggest yet:

The goal of expanding the event to 150 participants and spectators
- We have reached out to and are continually in contact with student groups from colleges in Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, and North Dakota to attract out of province students to come and collaborate at this year’s hackathon.

Collaboration with Crop Production Show (January 11-14th)
- This year’s hackathon will be held the weekend before Crop Production Show (http://www.cropproductiononline.com). In partnership with CPS, all participants will be getting free admission to the week long event to see speakers, view exhibits, and create extra networking opportunities.

Creating more Value-Added ideas
- Our end goal is to create startup companies out of Emerging Agriculture that grow here in Saskatchewan. To do this we are making this year’s hackathon more entry competitive by offering summer internship opportunities for the top half of participants in their respected fields of interest. For the top half of participants as decided by the judging panel, we are in partnership with
  - SeedHawk to offer interviews for a Design and Production Engineering summer internship interviews
  - IBM for 16 month computer science internship interviews in Toronto
  - Refresh Marketing for Computer Science and Marketing Internship Interviews
  - VendAsta for Computer Science and Marketing Internship Interviews
- We are in partnership with Sasktel’s M2M service which has benefitted agriculture startups in the past to create Emerging Agriculture’s first Sasktel Mini Case Challenge, which will give students one hour in the middle of the hackathon to solve an industry related problem created by Sasktel M2M Services

Creating more engagement across campus
- Emerging Agriculture has built a physical “Idea Wall” that made its debut at Pitch Party November 16th (http://www.usask.ca/pitchparty), and is to be rotated on a weekly basis in high traffic areas throughout all colleges on campus up until the event. It will then make it’s way to our booth at Crop Production Show to showcase this year’s winning ideas and get industry and producers excited about Emerging Agriculture 2017

Among the increased engagement among participants, spectators are welcome to view the first day pitches along with our Keynote Speaker Nikolas Badminton, who is a Futurist based out of Vancouver that forecasts the future of all industries for the decades to come including agriculture. We also welcome spectators to our Sunday night Panel Discussion, which will be discussing The Future of Agriculture: Understanding the value added benefits of innovation and collaboration to its sustainability between leading agriculture professionals.

Participation is free and spectator 3-day admission passes are $30. You can sign up at goo.gl/forms/64dSrqE0BR or by contacting Rory at rory.nussbaumer@usask.ca.

www.emergingagriculture.com

We’d like to thank our sponsors KPMG, VendAsta, Sasktel, Edwards School of Business, The Government of Saskatchewan, Futurepreneur, The University of Saskatchewan College of Agriculture and Bioresources, and College of Arts and Science, Farm Credit Canada, Global Grain Group, Richardson International, Alberta Barley SquareOne and SREDA, Three Farmers, Dominos Pizza Saskatoon, Refresh Inc, Seedhawk, and IBM for their monetary or in kind value donations. Without your donations our event wouldn’t be possible.