Night Lab Tbilisi
By Mariam Chanishvili
Monday, April 1
On March 29-31, Ghvinis Karkhana - Wine Factory hosted the first event of Night Lab Tbilisi (hackathon) organized by Tbilisi Night Economy and Tbilisi Startup Bureau.
Night Lab is a series of regular public events promoting innovations within which the programmers, creative industry representatives or just creative people gather, generate the idea of a product or business model and bring it to the next stage of the execution or implementation.
The series aims to develop micro-and medium-sized business projects and products, generate and promote innovative ideas in the light of night economy.
The head of Tbilisi Night Economy project, Sergi Gvarjaladze noted that Wine Factory was selected as a venue for the project due to the fact that it is one of the most successful locations with various businesses operating nowadays.
He also noted that the first event focused on digital products and services.
“We announced a call for applications and we received about 170 applications. 15 teams were selected, consisting of 2-5 participants in each of them. Such interest in this topic was unexpected for us,” said Gvarjaladze.
As a result of teamwork and 48 hours of supervision of competent mentors, digital services, product prototypes, application/websites, devices or data retrieval and visualization tools that are relevant to strengthening the night economy were created.
A Hackathon is a design sprint-like event in which computer programmers and others involved in software development, including graphic designers, interface designers, project managers, and others, often including domain experts, collaborate intensively on software projects.
The representatives of Wolt and Snap Fitness Tbilisi shared their experience with the participants within the frames of the event.
15 teams competed to create new digital products and services for Tbilisi's Night Time Economy.
Projects were evaluated by a specially selected competent jury which was staffed by professionals from creative, technological and business spheres.
The winners were awarded cash prizes.
The event was supported by Georgian Innovation and Technology Agency/GITA, Spark, Orient Logic, Grant Thornton Georgia, Edison, Dunkin 'Donuts and Wendy's Georgia.
