Category: hackathon

Cors and Node-RED using a simple forwarding server

1 Comment

When you use Node-RED on IBM Cloud during hackathons you will notice REST calls in flows cannot be directly invoked from a web application. The reason for this is mostly that cors (cross-origin resource sharing) is not enabled for the Node-RED server. This blog post is a simple workaround for this problem.

By the way, you can use the IBM Cloud for free, if you simply create an IBM Lite account. Here you only need an e-mail address.

I developed this workaround to have full control and be very flexible during a hackathon, when using Node-RED for prototyping and building integrations to services and web-applications, without changing Node-RED settings or using cors browser enabler.

Continue reading →

Being @Hacknext a Hackathon and Conference to create impact in InsurTech

2 Comments

I was one of the coaches at the sold out Hacknext in Munich, hosted at Kohlebunker, from  7. March – 9. March 2019 and in this blog post I want to share my personal impressions.

From my point of view it was great to see: young people build relevant solutions for the future with the latest technologies on cloud.
Best wishes to all hackers who attended and every success for the future.

IMG_6066.JPG

Hacknext  includes a hackathon and conference related to the insurance business called InsurTech.

In other words the hackers, attendees and coaches were spending three days in the Kohlebunker for:

  • Taking on challenges together, approximately 110 hackers organized into 20 teams
  • Benefiting from professional exchange on InsurTech with approximately 60 conference attendees
  • Providing valuable support from the API coaches

The challenges

Each of the hacker teams had to address a minimum of one of these challenges:

  • Using smart data and its benefits for insurance
  • Building the future of digital bancassurance
  • (R)evolutioning of the insurance agent
  • Rethinking retirement

In the following YouTube video you get a short impression of the great atmosphere at the hacknext:

Continue reading →

Being one of the coaches at the largest Healthcare Hackathon in Europe

Leave a comment

I want just to give you a brief personal impression about 1 ½ days of my last week as a Developer Advocate at IBM.

Being one the of coaches at the largest Healthcare Hackathon in Europe was incredible.

The Hack was supported by the University Hospital of Schleswig-Holstein (UKSH), Merck , the Kieler Nachrichten and IBM .

Around 150 hackers worked for two days in 25 international teams including students, companies and startups.  More numbers you can find on the official webpage Healthcare Hackathon in Europe .

For me:

We as humans, health is our most important asset, at the Healthcare Hackathon it was brought to the foreground again with the help of technology and new ideas.

Here I want just to highlight some ideas, I was personally impressed.
I put my free interpretation for each of these challenges under each bullet point of the challenges.
Note: Some of the linked information is in german.

The winner was: Hospimotion-and-Hospitainment-VR 
“Getting better by playing your physiotherapy game in “VR”.”

Continue reading →