Hackagong - Regional Innovation Catalyst

OUR MISSION

Seeding emergent innovation

We believe true breakthrough innovations and creative solutions to our global problems occur when vastly different people, technology, ideas and skills are mashed together. Our events & initiatives aim to curate fun serendipity via the juxtaposition of ideas across the spectrum of all disciplines.

Transform regional communities

Regional communities face many unique problems around local employment opportunities, ageing populations and skill shortages. We help these regional areas to ignite a grassroots culture of innovation and entrepreneurship by mixing diverse local and outside talent with the latest technology.

Mash thought silos

Our society is structured in a way that isolates people, their skills, knowledge and ideas into industry silos where only incremental innovation can occur. Since 2012 we’ve taken a truly multidisciplinary, generalist approach to help s/mash these silos and cross-pollinate ideas.

Bottom-up grassroots bazaar

The cathedral-like, hierarchical nature of our education systems, government institutions and corporate workplaces tends to stifle innovation and increase risk-aversion. Hackagong is bottom-up, decentralised and experimental to enable people and organisations to play without fear of failure.

Ongoing commercial partnerships

Businesses and organisations struggle to generate innovative ideas or creative solutions to their problems. The traditional hackathon solves this but most projects are immediately abandoned. We facilitate commercial partnerships to enable more projects to have an ongoing positive impact.

Bring people together

Hackagong was originally created in 2012 with the goal of bringing together the physically segregated arts and IT students at the University of Wollongong. We wanted to change the stereotypical culture clash between these groups to spark new ideas and unexpected creativity.

Build collaborative ecosystems

Too often hackathons and innovation initiatives become hyper-competitive to the detriment of the wider community, particularly in regions with smaller populations. Our strategies focus on open, collaborative ecosystem development with ongoing impact over one-off events.

Trailblaze hackathon initiatives

Hackagong has 5+ years of experience and learnings from 30+ events. With new niche hackathons sprouting weekly, we’re leading the way by experimenting with novel formats, encouraging much more multidisciplinary input, and ensuring projects continue to have an impact post-event.