Two Twin Cities tech companies are teaming up to create a new hackathon focused on solving some of the most pressing problems in food and agriculture.
Software development firm Foundry and agriculture-technology company Conservis will hold their hackathon, Affect the Cause, August 8-9 at Finnegans in downtown Minneapolis. Around 60 employees from Conservis and Foundry will participate in the event.
"The problem space of agriculture, food and supply chain is vast. Participants will have the opportunity to apply the latest advancements in computer science to everything from improving farm efficiency to reducing food waste," Joel Coppin, vice president of product development at Conservis, said in a statement. "There's tremendous opportunity for innovation within all areas of our industry right now."
Affect the Cause will kick off with a keynote from Brett Brohl, managing director of Techstars Farm to Fork. Team leaders will then present their hackathon ideas, and teams of four to six people will form organically around these ideas.
A panel of judges will select winners in several different categories. Awards and prizes for winners have yet to be determined, a spokesperson for Foundry told Minne Inno.
Farmers use Conservis' platform to manage their business and track and share data. The company has raised around $45 million in venture capital since it was founded in 2009, making it one of the top-funded ag-tech companies in Minnesota.
Foundry is an agency of strategists, designers and developers making tech solutions for web and mobile plaftforms.
Foundry and Conservis have previously partnered in creating ag-tech solutions for farmers. Both companies said that they considered staging their own hackathons, but decided to combine resources to give their employees "a creative retreat and out-of-office experience."
"These designers and makers are welcome to consider tech platforms ranging from IoT, open data, robotics, automation, AI and whatever's next," Nils Hansen, principal creative and Foundry, said in a release. "A hackathon environment lets us experiment in creating prototypes to see what we might make of our ideas."
