The FirstBlock-athon hackathon brings developers, researchers and organisations to Stockholm on 7–11 September. Only two of the eight themes concern finance. Ten ecosystem partners and four core partners are behind it.
Caption: Six guests and two moderators take part in the first digital pre-event for Blockathon Stockholm on 20 August. Graphic: Kaupr
A hackathon is a time-limited event where developers, founders and researchers work together on concrete problems. FirstBlock-athon runs from 7 to 11 September and forms part of Nordic Tech Week, the Nordic technology conference in Stockholm. The event was initiated by FirstBlock, with Kaupr as media partner and organiser of three digital pre-events.
The challenges participants will work on are divided into eight themes. Two of them sit within finance: financial services, and banking and fintech. The other six are humanitarian and social impact, the creative industries and music, digital products and platforms, applications of artificial intelligence, trust and identity, and emerging technology.
Fati Hakim, founder of FirstBlock, has spent twelve years working on blockchain strategy. She argues that the solutions outside finance already exist, but that they have little visibility in the Nordic market. She describes the technology as a layer of trust for identity and verification.
Myths about the technology persist, among them that blockchains are not transparent, and that its uses are limited to finance.
Ten ecosystem partners and four core partners stand behind the event. Several of them have been distributed across the three digital pre-events Kaupr is running beforehand, so that each broadcast addresses its own set of problems.
The first pre-event airs on 20 August from 11:00 to 12:30 CET, free and live on YouTube and Kaupr.io, under the title "Blockchain beyond finance". Six guests are interviewed by Morten Myrstad, founder and editor of Kaupr, and Zarina Björklund Rehn.
You can watch the broadcast live or as a recording at www.kaupr.io/blockathon-stockholm.
Ludvig Bergström, founder of Nordic Tech Week, is one of the guests. He built the conference on the idea that the tech industry should be open to anyone.
Hani Raisi Halilovic, founder of AI Institutet, is also among the guests. She is organising a full-day summit on 11 September under the title "AI & Blockchain: Bridging Research & Real-World Impact". It is held at the KTH Arenan venue in Stockholm.
This is the first physical gathering in the series, after four digital editions.
Madina Saleh, co-founder and chief executive of AIMS-Management, works with people who make a living creating content and who now face material generated by artificial intelligence. The question she brings is how identity can be verified and ownership of digital content documented.
Melanie Rideout is an AI strategist at the Swedish Red Cross and works on communication with volunteers. Her challenge concerns the security and privacy of the messaging services the organisation uses today.
Arun Maharajan leads the blockchain work at UNICEF. He brings a problem the organisation lives with: how to document that an aid programme actually works, without exposing information about the people receiving help, and in areas with weak connectivity.
You can follow the event in the run-up to September at onchain.kaupr.io/build, and join the conversation at onchain.kaupr.io/community/channels/blockathon-stockholm.
Sources: Kaupr, FirstBlock
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