Europe's biggest hackathon to host 'Junction Asia 2022' in Busan
來源: 開云體育手機app下載 時間: 2023-02-02 07:01:24
Shift President Lee Hyun-sae, left, and Busan Mayor Park Hyeong-joon on May 3 sign an MOU to host Junction Asia 2022 in Busan in August. Courtesy of the Busan City Government
By Ko Dong-hwan
Akseli Aho / Screenshot from Junction's homepage
Europe's biggest hackathon (a portmanteau of "hacking" and "marathon") organizer Junction is hosting its first continent-scale event in Busan under the banner "Junction Asia 2022."
Busan Mayor Park Hyeong-joon, Junction CEO Akseli Aho from Finland and Lee Hyun-sae, the head of Junction's Seoul-based operator Shift, agreed on May to host the event from Aug. 19 to 21 at Bexco and signed a memorandum of understanding at the city government office.
Junction Asia 2022 is open to all university students and young adults interested in technological innovation. The city government, accepting applicants from July, expects more than 300 participants from 20 countries to join. The Busan Tourism Organization sponsors the event by providing lodging for participants.
The event is comprised of workshops to solve a hackathon challenge proposed by the organizer, team-building networking between participants, ideation and development, as well as side events like mentoring sessions about launching and operating startups.
The hackathon will run for 48 hours and will be live streamed online.
Aho said Junction already has strong ties with Korea, which Junction Asia will strengthen even further. Korea previously hosted "JunctionX Seoul" in 2019, 2020 and 2021. The city's Yongsan District hosted it in 2019 offline, and it was held online-only in 2020 and 2021.
"This is one of the most influential events (organized by Junction) in Asia, and Busan will earn a global reputation for hosting such a major hackathon event," Aho said. "The event will bring together developers and entrepreneurs, forming global networks. Their partnership will build a bigger, more promising future."
Mayor Park expected that the technological breakthroughs realized in Junction Asia, once applied in real-life practices, will allow the city to take a "quantum leap." Shift, according to the student-driven non-profit organization's president, will make Busan "literally a junction" where human talent and technologies from around the globe intersect through this event.
Junction was launched in Helsinki in 2015 and has around 1,000 participants each year. Its separate brand, JunctionX, broadened its stages to the international level, hosting hackathons in sites across the world, including Tokyo, Beijing, Hanoi, Singapore, Budapest, Exeter and Barcelona.
Prior to Tuesday's signing of the MOU, Busan city government officials had contacted Shift in November 2021 and proposed hosting a hackathon event with Junction. People from Shift and Junction's headquarters in Finland, positively considering the idea, proposed hosting Junction Asia instead of JunctionX in the city.
"While the country's capital region surrounding Seoul is concentrated with innovative manpower and infrastructure necessary for young adults to launch startups, regional areas comparatively fall short of such environments," Baek Sang-hyun, an official from the Big Data Statistics Division of Busan city government's Digital Economy Innovation Office, told The Korea Times.
"We have been trying to bring in talent and build global networks to realize innovative ideas. We tried tracing the steps previously taken by the capital region. But in the rapidly changing digital transformation era it was virtually impossible. So we eyed Junction, where global innovative talent and networks are already connected to each other, and wanted to absorb that talent to make it a booster for our city's innovative ecosystem."
Junction is the brainchild of a startup orientation student group in Aalto University in Espoo, Finland. "Slush," a global annual startup and tech event in Helsinki that attracts talents and entrepreneurs from across the world, was also launched by the same group in 2008.
