Event Spotlight: DigitalCon20
This blog is the second for 2020 in our event spotlight series, chronicling what happens at various Earth Hacks events and providing insight into the impact these events have and the metrics they produce. To get in touch with us or learn more, visit our website at earthhacks.io.
By definition, hackathons involve physically bringing people together to tackle challenges, learn from each other, and build cool projects. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many hackathons, environmental and not, have moved online. (See our organizational response to COVID-19 here.)
One of the events that we supported that did so was Engineers for a Sustainable World’s 2020 Regional Conferences. Originally a constellation of day-long events hosted by chapters across the United States, the intrepid organizing team worked swiftly and tirelessly to combine the events into one digital event to still allow students to connect with each other and exchange ideas from their homes. This shift was particularly interesting because the original plan involved mini-Earth Hacks events at each of the regional conferences, each focusing on a specific theme that the individual organizing teams worked on.
Alyssa Owens, the Events Director at Engineers for a Sustainable World, said that “Working with the team to plan DigiCon has been an absolute pleasure. Everyone rallied together, in only a month, to completely adapt 3 in-person conferences to a digital platform. Between ESW-HQ, ESW chapters and Earth Hacks, we ended up having a successful event for those stuck at home who are passionate about sustainability. Even though we are quarantined inside and socially isolated, it doesn’t mean we can’t continue our passions and talk about the environment!”
As part of the shift to a unified digital event, the Earth Hacks events were combined into one focusing on retrofitting the future — using abandoned spaces to build the new structures we want to see. Participants were tasked with focusing on retrofitting projects in different level one ecoregions, as defined by the Environmental Protection Agency, in North America, focusing on the continental United States. They had 1.5 hours of hacking time to generate project proposals that could then be picked up by ESW chapters or external organizations to actually be implemented.
Despite the short timeframe of the hackathon, student teams came up with some amazing results, and walked away with “virtual paper plate awards”, titles that they can proudly bear for the rest of their time on Earth. Projects include:
Work by the “Hot Ice Masters”, focusing on retrofitting homes in the Clyde River area with solar panels. You can view their project proposal here.
A carbon sequestration project proposal that won the “Carbon Crunching Award”, focusing on Jackson Generating Station in Jackson County, Michigan. You can view their project proposal here.
The winners of the “Little Retrofit on the Prarie, AKA Respect the Drip” award created a project proposal focusing on retrofitting agricultural water systems in the great plains ecoregion. Carly Cohen, one of the Earth Hacks participants and a member of this team, said “Our team was tasked with using retrofitting to solve a problem in The Great Plains Region — an area with a wide range of ecosystems that experiences a large variation in precipitation and temperature. One of the main problems that the region deals with is water management — more specifically drought that is exacerbated by rising global temperatures. A majority of the water usage and consumption in the region is used for agriculture. In order to promote the use of sustainable water management practices and minimize the negative effects of drought, the team decided to retrofit efficient and effective water management systems, such as drip irrigation and evaporation suppression technologies, into the existing agricultural system.” You can view their project proposal here.
You can view all of the solutions here, follow Engineers for a Sustainable World on social media @eswhq to stay up to date, and get more information at eswglobal.org.