Hack 4 Environment - Cairo "Post-event Summary"

Post-event Summary

Your full name is: ​ Mohamed Sayed Mohamed Elewa

Your name on the platform is: elewa94

About the event

“Hack 4 Environment – Cairo” (22,23 November 2019) - Almaqarr Coworking Space – The Greek Campus – Down Town, Cairo.

Event Link: Redirecting...

Event agenda

Main activities and topics Participants reflections /Questions Out-comes of the discussions
Day 1 * Edgeryders Icebreaking activity.
  • conversation about how participants developed their ideas
  • Session 1: Environmental issues in Egypt and SDG’s.
  • Session 2: Ideation & Business Model Canvas.
  • First call from Nadia.
  • Session3: Presentation skills for ideas.
  • The Product Design session – we couldn’t join the online session.
  • Participants worked on their ideation.|* What is product design?
  • Discussions about SDG’S and how to align it with their ideas.
  • How to make a business plan and its components.
  • How to evaluate their idea and validate it.
  • Is Edgeryders going to have a share in their startups with the fund?
  • Too many concerns about IT and Technology.

There is was a confusion between prototype and mvp for most of the participants.|* Participants had some insights about the environment in Egypt.

  • Participant learned how to develop their business model using business model canvas.
  • Learned more about product mapping through discussions.|
    |Day 2|* Session 4: workshop about Fundraising and Pitching
  • Live chat on Storytelling for Sales by Matteo.
  • Participants started to work to finalize their Projects and required deliverables.|* How to get funded?
  • Questions about what is the best revenue stream model fits their ideas.
  • Many concerns about how to prepare the business plan and how to write the solution in a good way.|* Participant identified how to pitch their ideas
  • Learned how to calculate the mvp cost.|

Projects list:

Project name # Green Capital
Team members AlaaElrhman - Karim Goudy - Toka Refaat - Alaa Mamdouh
Brief description Enhance the networking, connecting and sharing capabilities between environment development startups, companies, entities and individuals
topics discussed * The revenue stream model.
  • The platform development.
  • Potential business development solutions.|
Project name # Hack4 Environment cairo: Environmental Interface platform - #6 by emanclimate
Team members EMAN ABDELAZEM – Dalia Fathy ( @Daliafathy )
Brief description A platform that acts as an environmental mediator for climate justice
topics discussed IT concerns
Project name # COLEX
Team members # Mohamed Hassan (@mohamed75) - Mohamed Aboelkheer - Saher Elamir
Brief description # produce renewable energy by turning organic wastes into Biogas.
topics discussed
Project name # Greeny
Team members Ashraf Taha ( @Ashraf_Taha ) - Abdelmo’men Ahmed ( @Mystero )
  • Mohamed Alaa ( @MohamedAbkarino )|
    |Brief description|Compress the fumes to liquid that is highly concentrated which can then use to later and extract hydrocarbon derivatives.|
    |topics discussed|How to develop MVP cost plan?|
Project name Clean River
Team members Khlood Mostafa (@Khlood_Mostafa)- Tasneem Yahya (@TasneemYahya2019 - Hamza Mohsen ( @Hamza )
Brief description provide a filtration system using the chelating property of chitosan beads.
topics discussed Concerns about how to develop MVP and budgeting?
Project name BioSolar
Team members ## Youssef (@ Youssef) - Shehab Rabie ( @Shehab.Rabie ) - sayed Mohamed ( @sayedomran )
Brief description Replacing chemical material with non-harmful biogenic material in solar cells
topics discussed Concerns about implementing the idea as it need to be made in china.
Project name FOTM Company
Team members Hadeer Osama ( HadeerOsama ) – Eman alaa ( @Emanalaaeldin ) - Ali Attia @Ali.Attia – Mai Youssef – Osama ( @Osama )
Brief description produce high protein mash with competitive price for chicken farms’ owners who wants to Integrated feeding and high immunity for chickens by decreasing mash costs.
topics discussed

General remarks

Which teams did/do you find especially interesting or credible and why?

I find that they all had interesting ideas but they need too much mentorship.

The teams I find interesting:

  • Environmental Interface platform team

  • Green Capital team.

  • Colex team.

  • Stats

  • Number of participants: 22 first day – 16 second day.

  • Gender balance: almost the half.

  • Recommendations

  • The timeline was free tight for all preparation as it was less than a week for people to sign-up and fill the form for the event which made a low number of participants. As we also contacted the selected participant 2 days only before the event.

  • The Event Registration Form wasn’t friendly to user to sign up, as the user experience didn’t help them and it didn’t open from different browsers as I got different messages about this. As the form moves to next page easily from mobile that causes that most of participants data wasn’t complete for most of them.

  • The Registration Form didn’t have a direct question which made a confusion in most of the answers and didn’t really filter the participant in a good way. So, I had to get more information in phone to make sure they have an idea and if there is a team and to know more about the idea to see if it really fits the event.

  • The event name prevented too many people from applying as they thought it’s something about environment work more than a hackathon and we are focusing in SDG’s.

  • The SDG’s part make confusion for some people that they didn’t consider this in their ideas. It’s only something solves an environmental issue and they didn’t align their ideas to SDG’s.

  • The details about the prize wasn’t clear. As some participant or applicants see that there is 15 K $$ prize and they didn’t get it will be for all projects. Which when explained some participant didn’t complete the first day or apologized when I contacted them when selected to attend.

  • In this point I written in Egypt event that the prize is between 1 K – 3K $$ as I knew that this will make a misunderstanding but I changed it when you asked for the format that you already made.

  • The time space between session was too much, even with our local session and it was too long to have 3 days event for most of participants which lead us to cancel the third day.

  • People liked @matteo session because it was interactive and they got the chance to work with him.

Photos

Media link: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-0X7GDk1aS04VQsw4PxUmTEp_u-QQDo8?usp=sharing

Video Link: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1RZLLxOxW4EJ3PzYp5Yc3sy315clE2b-x

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Thank you for this Mohamed and @HadeerGhareeb :slight_smile: it is a challenge organising a meaningul, high quality experience even under the best of circumstances.

It seems you guys/ the project teams discussed alot of topics. I am curious as to what you yourself learned about climate change and or ecological degradation in your country, and the market/ fundability/ revenue streams for ventures in the sector?

Hello @elewa94 Please double check the link of Environmental Interface platform, it seems to be inactive?

Thank you

I will check, sorry for the late reply

Hello Nadia,

what we get that there is no real initiatives that we can measure it’s impact in fact regrading the climate change.

most of the initiatives, startups and are focusing on the ##Recycling which is way more behind as it also have a revenue from working on it.

the funds are not to much in this area.

we find that Hult Prize “Egypt” this year’s theme where focusing in environment and it has a big numbers for winners that is around 1 and 2 millions EGP. i partnered with Hult Prize Egypt Office and they agreed to include the winners from our Hackathon to their final competition directly skipping the usual procedures

Winners from the hackathon in Egypt you mean? cc @zmorda @OCILab

Yes from egypt

Interesting. Just to be sure I understand - what do you mean most projects are focusing on cycling?

recycling , i’am very sorry

Ah no, I meant it more in terms of recycling what and where do the revenues for this come from? Was there any mention of how this market works in practice at the moment e.g distribution or what different things cost?

It’s helpful to know for when we get down to assessing the feasibility of different options for recycling based activities in egypt

we didn’t go really in this topics as non of the projects where about recycling.

but there is companies or initiatives working about cleaning water plastic in the Nile and red sea . there is some people working to collect the waste and educate people to Separate the garbage as it’s not common here and making profit by recycling it or exporting it to china

that is really interesting. Would be cool to connect people doing interesting work along the Nile around these issues. Not via institutions but really P2P. Might event be up for getting involved in something like that myself.

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It is an excellent opportunity for the projects you have recommended @elewa94 !
We will be happy if you can follow the process of the Hult prize and keep us updated about their progress and the support that will be offered to them.

Sure, i sent them all the project posts on the platform here and their contact to communicate with our teams.

and i’ll keep you updates for anything new

hi, sorry for jumping late in the discussion, I was dragged away from my virtual life.

About the 2 day event.
I was impressed by the diversity of participants. usually, those events are attended mostly by engineers however this time there were also participants coming from a scientific background (pharmaceutical, microbiology, biotechnology), besides agriculture.
The level of the participants was always wide, some were still students and others had Ph.D., which unfortunately was limiting the discussions sometimes and needed more interventions from us to open it.

16 attended the first day then the number dropped the next day.
We started by a quick introduction then used the Edgeryders tools as an icebreaker, some participants were not open talking to each other at the beginning so we used Didi asks cards to push the discussions.

The participants’ expectations:
many came with just an idea that wants to develop it into projects, others were already ready with a prototype but were looking for funding opportunities to scale it up. Some were expecting more informative sessions about the environment in general.

Regarding recycling, participants were aware of the small scale startups in Egypt, and business opportunities. I took the opportunity to speak about my favorite recycling project in Egypt " the garbage city" and the competition in Cairo between garbage collectors.

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Were there any new/unexpected things you discovered from the discussions about the topics, field, country, projects, markets or businesses? It would be nice to have a more thorough and structured documentation of the contents of discussions themselves as this can give more people access to important information that they need to develop their knowledge/ideas/projects…

Most of the topics discussed are included in the projects posted by the participants already.
Maybe, I need to phrase this, the event was more into being informative than interactive in my opinion. I didn’t see it as a hackathon for the absence of the methodology, tools and experts.
The event went like, sessions about edgeryders, SDG goals, business model, presentation skills, pitching, and the platform, so discussions were not that widely scattered.

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