175 registered to attend Ulster Bank’s #hackmakethebank ‘Hackathon’ which takes place next weekend

175 people, including coders, designers, mentors and investors, are registered to attend Ulster Bank’s dedicated banking Hackathon next weekend from 29th to 31st January 2016 with the Open Bank Project.

The Hackathon, which concentrates on creating innovative ideas for banks and bank customers, has been a huge success to date and last year saw over 160 attendees come up with 36 great ideas across the two events in Dublin and Belfast.

The event which is already over-subscribed, has attracted participants from IBM, Trinity College, Dublin Business School, Accenture, WorldNet, Bitpilot, Ulster Bank, RBS and many more, for an intensive period of peer-to-peer idea generation and programming.

Participants are encouraged to come up with ideas which are quickly ‘hacked’ together to create operable and viable propositions to benefit customers. Set in Dogpatch labs, which is quickly establishing itself as the centre of Fintech in Ireland, the event will also offer unrivalled networking opportunities for any entrepreneurs that do want to take their ideas to the next stage. They are also in with a chance to win Beats headphones, Parrot AR Drones, Apple Watches and Sphero 2.0.

Mentors during the weekend include representatives from SWIFT, CurrencyFair, Bookbuzz, Zendesk, Each and Other, Temenos and Ulster Bank and the judging panel includes Patrick Eltridge, RBS CIO, Robin Marshall, Ulster Bank CIO, Barry Murray, Ulster Bank Chief of Staff and Mark Barry, Stripe.

Commenting on the event, Robin Marshall, CIO of Ulster Bank said:

“We are delighted to run Ireland’s only banking Hackathon again this year, to bring together people who are energetic, creative and innovative and challenge the way banks serve their customers. Ulster Bank’s ambition is to become the number one bank for customer service, trust and advocacy, and we constantly search for ideas on how to best serve our customers. We’ve designed this event to reward innovative thinking year after year.

“David Heath from last year’s event has already established his business, and the company will be going live with their product in the coming months which will provide huge efficiencies for audit firms. We are proud to support their work which could eventually be of huge practical benefit to businesses across Ireland.”

Simon Redfern, founder of the Open Bank Project and CEO of TESOBE said:

“The Open Bank Project is delighted to be working with Ulster Bank again this year. Following last year’s successful events in Dublin and Belfast, and the terrific ideas that were developed, we believe there is no limit to the ideas that can be explored and we look forward to what emerges over the weekend.”

The following challenges have been set for participants, with prizes awarded for each challenge:

– SUSTAIN: Make the bank stronger and more sustainable with: Data and analytics, Artificial intelligence & APIs

– DISRUPT: Make the bank irrelevant with: Mobile and wearable, Social collaboration & Blockchain

– DESIGN: Make the bank beautiful with design that places an emphasis on people and UX

Prizes include:

– Sustain: Beats Headphones
– Disrupt: Parrot AR Drones
– Design: Apple Watches
– Best Technical Achievement: Sphero 2.0

Application Programming Interfaces (API’s) used at the event include: Open Bank Project, RBS BlueBank (the first time that this beta version of the API will be made publicly available), Evercam, and Colu. These APIs enable the participants to quickly piece together a proof of concept to demonstrate to the judging panel.

For more information, and how to enter for the event, visit www.hackmakethebank.com