Team “Middebosch”, which developed a visualisation of offshore diamond mining analytics for mining firm De Beers, emerged the winner of the Unearthed hackathon that took place in Cape Town over the weekend.
Disrupt Africa reported last week Unearthed, a global innovation programme that looks to solve resources sector challenges by developing, implementing and supporting new technologies, will hold a hackathon in Cape Town from tomorrow aimed at developing solutions for the mining sector.
Over 100 entrepreneurs and innovators took part in the event, prototyping solutions to industry challenges from De Beers and Anglo American. Seventeen teams were formed, with each team spending over 54 hours attempting to solve challenges in a variety of areas.
Team “Middebosch”, consisting of software engineers Pieter Woltzhausen and Albert Swart, was awarded the top prize and will now present their solution at the Mining Indaba in Cape Town, which took place yesterday.
“We are very excited to head to Mining Indaba, but first I want to improve this before I demonstrate it! So I am keen to give an even better demonstration at Indaba,” said Holtzhausen.
In second place was Team “Codeswop”, which developed a solution addressing the end of mine sound analysis challenge from De Beers. The team currently works together on software solutions as a tech startup in Cape Town. The Young Innovator award went to Team “#MakingWavelets” for its novel approach to the same challenge.
“Technology implementation costs time and money – two critical resources that the mining sector currently requires to reinvent itself. The Unearthed Hackathon is the perfect platform to fast-track innovation and short-circuit this process,” said Jeannette McGill, head of technology and innovation at Anglo American.
