The first Balkan Hackathon, organized by the Representation of the European Commission in Bulgaria, Sofia Municipality and Sofia Development Association, the State e-Government Agency, Sofia Tech Park and Webit Foundation, is now over. Of the 30 teams from 9 Balkan countries participating in the 24-hour challenge, 24 were able to produce a working demo to present to the jury.

Nine teams reached the final round. Team Ethereal from Kosovo developed a “smart family” mobile app – for sharing responsibilities beween family members, shopping, paying utilities and family budgeting. Team Swift from Macedonia developed a virtual administrative assistant – a messaging app for communicating with local government authorities: citizens can ask questions and receive answers generated by an AI algorithm. Two teams from ELSYS reached the finals – Infinity+1 and Hushovete. Hushovete developed a voice assistant for the visually impaired using both software and harware on Raspberry Pi. Infinity+1 prototyped an accessibility AI that can interpret and summarize the content of text files and images. Wakanda Forever from Bulgaria created a model of an online university for peer-to-peer learning. Another Bulgarian finalist – Spoko – developed a working demo of Ana, their bulgarian-speaking equivalent of Alexa and Google Home, trained for 24 hours to read news articles and turn home appliances on and off.

Read more: The First Balkan Hackathon, “Breaking the Digital Borders,” Has Concluded