An Aussie team focused on digital strategies, has taken out the top international award for the Indigitous’ annual “#HACK” weekend in early October! Indigitous is a global organization focused on helping fulfill the Great Commission by engaging and unleashing Believers into digital missions.
“#HACK2020” was this year’s event, sponsored by Indigitous, to bring groups of digital strategists from around the world together virtually to develop digital tools to help us build our faith or share the Gospel more effectively. Over the course of the weekend, 1088 volunteers, based in 141 cities across 29 countries, came together to work on 90 d
“#HACK2020” was this year’s event, sponsored by Indigitous, to bring groups of digital strategists from around the world together virtually to develop digital tools to help us build our faith or share the Gospel more effectively. Over the course of the weekend, 1088 volunteers, based in 141 cities across 29 countries, came together to work on 90 different real-world projects.Our winning Aussie team of six tackled a project to help people balance their online and offline time, including time with God. This team created a Google Chrome browser extension, termed “Switchoff“, to help people set healthy boundaries around their time on the internet, encourage them into face-to-face relationships, and make time to read their Bibles.
Overall in Australia, there were 26 people that volunteered 30 hours of their time over the course of the weekend – all completely online! These teams, across Australia, developed projects that included an app to connect donors with individual native missionaries around the world using trust mapping, and a natural language “chatbot” to help people explore Christianity.
Scott Adamson, our Power to Change Digital team leader, said “I was quite pleased to learn that the project was deemed the best by the Australian judges. I was rather astounded to learn last week that it had been shortlisted as one of the top six in the world. But I was absolutely gobsmacked to wake up on Saturday morning to the news that it had taken out the top international award.” The team has been awarded US$1000 to continue to advance the project and US$5000 in Amazon Web Services credits (if needed).
A special “Thank you” to Tim Evans for leading the winning team. Josh Montzka and Lewis Wilson were the organisers of the weekend. And credit to Tony O’Hagan who led the chatbot project.
Might you have skills that you could lend to our Digital Strategies Team? Contact Scott Adamson at scott.adamson@powertochange.org.au to learn more about how you might bring your expertise to this team.
