With wildfires raging in the West and COVID-19 cases remaining high in the US, eyes are on the five finalists just announced by the 2020 Call for Code Global Challenge who have innovative ideas for solving global problems in the areas of climate change and the coronavirus.
Acting in concert, co-founders IBM and David Clark Cause, with the additional partner support of The Linux Foundation, and Charitable Partner United Nations Human Rights, are driving a global movement comprised of over 400,000 developers in 179 nations. Now in its third year of a five year $30 million initiative, participants are tasked to create global scale applications using open source technology.
The winner will be incubated and then launched into communities of need around the world. They will receive the $200K grand prize that will be announced on October 13 via a digital event. The top five finalists presented solutions in the areas of: remote education, smarter farming, social distancing, support for small businesses, and the reduction of carbon footprints. A panel of judges drawn from leaders in the areas of human rights, disaster risk reduction, business, and technology will select the winner.
The Call for Code global competition over its short three year history has generated more than fifteen thousand solutions utilizing open source-powered products and technologies such as Red Hat OpenShift, IBM Cloud, IBM Watson, among others. With the Challenge’s broad reach, issues at the local level are identified more readily and those with the potential to be scaled to help any community in the world rise to the top.
“This year of crisis underscores the need for the world’s developers and business leaders to apply the power of hybrid cloud, AI and open source technology to address society’s most pressing issues,” said Bob Lord, Senior Vice President, Cognitive Applications, Blockchain, and Ecosystems, IBM.
The finalists are:
Agrolly (Asia Pacific) – A distributed team of developers from Brazil, India, Mongolia, and Taiwan having met at Pace University proposed a platform for connecting small farmers around the world experiencing crop yields due to climate change. It will tie weather forecasts with crop requirements published by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization to assist local farmers.
Business Buddy (Asia Pacific) – A team of students in Australia at the University of Sydney presented a one-stop-shop for the delivery of personalized and responsive updates to small businesses that will assist their battle against the financial impacts of COVID-19.
OffShip (North America) – A team of developers in Canada from Morgan Stanley offered an easy-to-use browser plugin that educates consumers about their online purchases relating to the impact on the environment. It estimates the carbon dioxide footprint of each purchase, while presenting them with alternatives or purchase and donate carbon offset credits seamlessly.
Safe Queue (North America) – A single developer in Los Angeles proposes a community-driven mobile app that will replace physical lines at shopping centers, small businesses, and polling places with on-demand virtual lines offering safety for entry during COVID-19. It uses GPS location data for those within 1000 feet of a location. It allows employees to manage queues digitally, while validating entry with a randomly generated QR code for each customer.
SchoolListIt (North America) – A working mother of three children in North Carolina offered a way for families to better manage schoolwork during the especially challenging circumstances surrounding COVID-19. The service compiles information from the wide array of learning apps used by teachers that makes it easy for students or guardians to understand more easily the assignments that are due and when, while gathering together a digital community for parents.
Read about another COVID-19 related competition having a $1 million prize
