It’s time to hack the wood!
On 20-22 of October, Garage48 Wood hackathon will be driving us into the magical world of wood!
Garage48 Wood hackathon is focusing on building real things from wood and solving challenges in wood and furniture industries. The event will bring together wood industry companies, industrial designers and architects, engineers and wood processing wizards and students from many fields – wood, engineering, design, art, entrepreneurship and others. Come and let your imagination and innovative spirit fly as the range of things that can be built is from small size design elements to a normal-size piece of furniture to a wooden house detail or a mock-up of a real building.
Garage48 Wood is organized by Garage48, TSENTER Centre of Competence for Wood Processing and Furniture Manufacturing and Vidzeme Planning Region as a part of Wood & Furniture project in the Interreg Estonia-Latvia programme. The venue where all the hacking magic will take place is hosted by TSENTER in Väimela, Võru county.
We are inviting designers & architects, carpenters/joiners, technologists, constructors, engineers and wood industry practitioners & professionals from Estonia & Latvia and passionate persons with good management skills to hack into wood and build physical prototypes in 48 hours. Industry mentors, Võru County Vocational Training Centre’s workshop rooms, TOOLS, equipment (including various wood materials) & on-site action-team are all there to help you build your innovative idea into reality and deliver a rocking final demo on Sunday evening.
Spots are limited! Act fast and secure your seat!
PS. To buy a ticket from Latvia, please choose “Latvian bank links” section from the payment page. As the system does not support payments via Swedbank, clients of Swedbank can use credit card payment or select invoice option.
Follow the event updates and get more useful info for preparing for the hackathon on Facebook.
If you have questions, contact us at wood@garage48.org
PRE-EVENTS
For the prototype building to go successfully at the hackathon, we will be organising pre-events in both Estonia and Latvia to get you ready for the main event, discuss ideas for the hackathon and give tips for pitching your ideas.
Pre-events will be happening:
Oct 16th 10.00-12.00 in RIGA @ Art Academy of Latvia (Kalpaka boulv 13)
Oct 16th 17.00-19.00 in VALMIERA @ Valmiera Business and Innovation Incubator (Purva iela 12A)
Oct 17th 10.00-13.00 in VÄIMELA @ Tsenter Wood processing and furniture manufacturing competence centre (Pärna street 1)
Oct 17th 17.00-19.00 in TARTU @ SPARK HUB (Narva street 3)
Oct 18th 17.15-19.00 in TALLINN @ Estonian Academy of Arts (Estonia pst 7, room 429)
Choose your location and REGISTER HERE.
BUSES
Hackathon ticket also includes transportation to the event. We will have buses coming on routes Tallinn-Tartu-Väimela and Riga-Valmiera-Väimela.
REGISTER:
for the Tallinn-Tartu-Väimela bus HERE
for the Riga-Valmiera bus HERE.
Buses leave back from the hackathon at 20.00 on Sunday, Oct 22th evening - both to Tartu-Tallinn & Valmiera-Riga directions.
ACCOMMODATION
We will provide some floor room at TSENTER premises for accommodation - so take your sleeping bag with you.
SCREW IT, LET’S DO IT!Garage48 Wood hackathon is the opening event of the Wood & Furniture project in the Interreg Estonia-Latvia programme. The project is financed by the European Regional Development Fund and co-financed by the Ministry of Finance and supported by Võru County Vocational Training Centre.
Friday, Oct 20
17:30 - Check-in, networking & snacks
18:00 - Opening remarks
18:30 - Pitching ideas in 90"
19:30 - Refreshment Break
19:50 - Pitching ideas in 90"
20:45 - Team formation
22:00 - Team work begins!
Saturday, Oct 21
09:00 - Breakfast. Development continues
10:00 - Checkpoint #1
11:00 - Mentoring round starts
13:00 - Lunch
17.30 - Pitch drill introduction
18:00 - Checkpoint #2. Development continues...
19:00 - Dinner
20:00 - Development continues
Sunday, Oct 22
09:00 - Breakfast. Development continues
09:30 - Checkpoint #3
10:00 - Pitch drill session #1
13:00 - Lunch
14:00 - Pitch drill session #2
15:30 - CLEANING
16:00 - Refreshment break
17:00 - Finale. Pitching session.
18:30 - Refreshment break and Jury takes the time to select winners
19:00 - Award ceremony & networking
20:00 - Buses leave for Tartu-Tallinn & Valmiera-Riga
What is Garage48 about?
Garage48 is a weekend long intensive development event to work out innovative technological solutions. In 48 hours, participants turn their ideas into working prototypes. A Garage48 event is a mixture of a hackathon and an exercise from a bootstrapper's bible. With origins from Estonia & the Silicon Valley, Garage48 events evolved being the first of its kind events in rapidly developing tech countries: Ukraine, Latvia, Belarus, Ghana, Uganda, Kenya & elsewhere. The aim of Garage48 is to bring innovative ideas and new startups into life.
PREPARING FOR THIS HACKATHON
We'll start on Friday at 17:30 with opening doors. Please come on time, as the registration process might take some time. This time before the official opening is a great opportunity for getting to know the crowd and to network. See the agenda for further information.
WHAT TO BRING WITH YOU?
Positive attitude, open mind and lots of energy! Everything you need for a rapid product development. We will have equipment and materials on site, but to be sure we recommend you to bring your own stuff as well. You never know when you need something yourself or if you could help out another team. Sharing is caring :)
The fact is that, if you build something what really works on Sunday evening, then we will not ask the bits and pieces back - you don't have to break your prototype, the team can take the it home and continue working on it. This does not apply though for more expensive things.
Please take your:
laptop
3-5m power extension cord (as power might be on distance),
mobile phone
all chargers
Optional:
photo camera to take and share photos
mattress
sleeping bag and towel (in case you registered for sleepover at the venue)
credit cards for domain registration
business cards (if you have any)
PITCHING IDEAS
Ideas are presented based on "elevator-pitch" method within 90 seconds. Event host and audience can ask 1 to 3 short questions.
You can prepare 1 (one) PDF slide to support your pitch. You should send the slide by Friday noon (20.10), at the e-mail wood@garage48.org (Subject: name of your project).
Consider following key points:
- Describe briefly your background (10 sec)
- What is the name of the idea (5 sec)
- What's the idea all about? What is the problem your idea solves? Target user count and description (30 sec)
- Technical solution and if there is a revenue model (in case of non-profit idea, how the maintenance and further development costs will be covered?) (30 sec)
- Minimum viable product and plan for 48 hours. Who do you need for the team? (20 sec)
NB! Practice your pitch to your friends or family before you present! 90 seconds goes really fast!
FORMING TEAMS
After pitching is over, we will put all the ideas on the wall. Every participant will choose their favourite idea and this is how teams will be formed. Usually 16 to 18 best ideas will get enough interested people to get the "green light" for the implementation.
Average team has about 5 to 7 people and the team should be "balanced" - covering all required roles like necessary engineers, designer, a project manager (team lead/visionary), and marketer in order to get the product/service ready in 48 hours! Minimum size for a team is 4 people and max is 8 people.
If some ideas get too few people or not balanced teams (probably unable to build the service), the idea will be dumped. Those people should choose another idea/team.
WORKING IN TEAMS
After forming the teams, organizers will give a room/space for every team for the weekend. You should start by dividing roles, setting the product vision, customer journey and start working right away.
It is very important that you have a project manager (team lead) in the team - one of his tasks is to keep the focus of the team, one eye on the clock and the other on the team progress. 48 hours is really a short time.
Food and drinks. We provide breakfast, lunch and dinner on Saturday and Sunday. So, you could focus on work and building your product.
MENTORS
We have arranged mentors to work with the teams throughout the weekend. Some of them are more technical, some more business savvy. Be open and ask for their advice and contacts.
Please wear your name badge during the whole event, this will help to encourage networking and gets you inside through security guards. Otherwise be open, get to know new people, share your ideas and give ideas/feedback to other teams.
MOST IMPORTANT - have fun!
